Tag Archives: global

New global aging index tracks population health and well-being

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Liz Seegert

About Liz Seegert

Liz Seegert (@lseegert), is AHCJ’s topic editor on aging. Her work has appeared in NextAvenue.com, Journal of Active Aging, Cancer Today, Kaiser Health News, the Connecticut Health I-Team and other outlets. She is a senior fellow at the Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement at George Washington University and co-produces the HealthCetera podcast.

Photo: Bridget Coila via Flickr

How are countries around the world adapting to the dramatic increase in their older populations? A new index provides some alternative context for measuring the health of aging inhabitants.

The Index of Societal Aging, created by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the University of California’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, uses specific measures across five social and economic indicators, including an evidence-based metric to assess effectiveness over time and across many nations. Continue reading →

International group shares concerns about disconnect between dental, medical care

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Mary Otto

About Mary Otto

Mary Otto, a Washington, D.C.-based freelancer, is AHCJ's topic leader on oral health and the author of "Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America." She can be reached at mary@healthjournalism.org.

Photo: World Bank Photo Collection via Flickr

Back in 2000, then-Surgeon General David Satcher warned in his landmark “Oral Health in America” report about the nation’s “silent epidemic” of oral disease.

Satcher described the disproportionate burden of untreated disease borne by millions of poor, minority and elderly Americans, the shortage of providers in many communities, the disconnect between dental care and the wider health care system. Continue reading →

For context, add global dimension to your reporting

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Pia Christensen

About Pia Christensen

Pia Christensen (@AHCJ_Pia) is the managing editor/online services for AHCJ. She manages the content and development of healthjournalism.org, coordinates AHCJ's social media efforts and edits and manages production of association guides, programs and newsletters.

Trudy Lieberman

Trudy Lieberman

Veteran health care journalist Trudy Lieberman says that she’s long observed that U.S. health reporters are reluctant to reach out globally to inform their reporting.

She points out that the health stories we’re asked to report are the same ones our counterparts abroad are writing and that this “reportorial parochialism results in poor understanding of foreign health care and makes it easy to report misleading or false claims because we have no knowledge to judge their correctness or to give context so audiences can judge for themselves.” Continue reading →

International panel formed as resource for journalists

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Pia Christensen

About Pia Christensen

Pia Christensen (@AHCJ_Pia) is the managing editor/online services for AHCJ. She manages the content and development of healthjournalism.org, coordinates AHCJ's social media efforts and edits and manages production of association guides, programs and newsletters.

green-globeSix AHCJ members are part of a new international effort to share information about how other countries’ health systems work.

The Panel of International Journalists was the brainchild of former AHCJ president Trudy Lieberman and created with the help of Noralou P. Roos, Ph.D., and the Evidence Network of Canadian Health Policy (commonly known as EvidenceNetwork.ca), as Lieberman explains in this CJR piece.

The New York-based journalist wanted to “encourage more cross-country conversation and tap into the expertise of colleagues in other countries who report on the same health and medical issues we do.” Continue reading →

Carter Center reports only 148 cases of Guinea worm disease remain worldwide

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Pia Christensen

About Pia Christensen

Pia Christensen (@AHCJ_Pia) is the managing editor/online services for AHCJ. She manages the content and development of healthjournalism.org, coordinates AHCJ's social media efforts and edits and manages production of association guides, programs and newsletters.

Former President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter discussed global health and mental health at Health Journalism 2012

Photo: Len Bruzzese/AHCJ
Former President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter discussed global health and mental health at Health Journalism 2012.

If you attended Health Journalism 2012 in Atlanta, today’s news out of the Carter Center that only 148 cases of Guinea worm disease remain worldwide shouldn’t be surprising.

In the opening session of that conference, former President Jimmy Carter said “The most exciting thing in our life right now is the approaching demise of the last Guinea worm that will ever live on earth.”

Well, according to the Carter Center, “cases of the debilitating disease were reduced by 73 percent in 2013 compared to 542 cases in 2012. When the Center began leading the first international campaign to eradicate a parasitic disease, there were an estimated 3.5 million Guinea worm cases occurring annually in Africa and Asia.”

At Health Journalism 2012, Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, discussed issues in global health, including guinea worm disease, and efforts underway at The Carter Center to address them. The Carters founded the center in 1982 in Atlanta to advance peace and health around the world.

As Noelle Hunter reported for AHCJ, Jimmy Carter recalled the first time he encountered the “horrible affliction” that’s been around for millennia, but exists only in remote areas of Africa and Asia. Continue reading →