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Influencing food environments for healthy diets

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO (2016) C2

Food environments are usually defined as the settings with all the different types of food made available and accessible to people as they go about their daily lives. That is, the range of food in supermarkets, small retail outlets, wet markets, street food stalls, coffee shops, tea houses, s...chool canteens, restaurants, and all the other venues where people buy and eat food. These environments differ enormously depending on the context. They can be extensive and diverse, with a seemingly endless array of options and price ranges, or they can be sparse, with very few options on offer. Because they determine what food consumers can access at a given moment in time, at what price, and with what degree of convenience, food environments both constrain and prompt the consumer’s choice.Food environments are influenced by the food systems which supply them, and vice versa. Food systems encompass the entire range of activities, people and institutions involved in the production, processing, marketing, consumption and disposal of food (FAO, 2013). They include but are not limited to food supply chains. Making food systems nutrition-sensitive can contribute to addressing all forms of malnutrition, as food systems determine whether the food needed for good nutrition are available, affordable, acceptable and of adequate quantity and quality. How closely food systems and food environments are interrelated and interdependent, and the degree to which external factors affect nutrition outcomes, varies from setting to setting.Many of today’s food systems and food environments are challenged in supporting consumer choices that are consistent with healthy diets and good nutrition. Consumers are not making choices based on nutrition and health, and poor diet is now the number one risk factor for death and disability worldwide (GBD, 2015). Food systems that do not enable healthy diets are increasingly recognized as an underlying cause of malnutrition (GLOPAN, 2016), and malnutrition, irrespective of form, has a huge cost. Economic costs associated with undernutrition are estimated at $1-2 trillion per year, about 2-3% of global GDP (FAO, 2013); the global economic cost of obesity and associated diet-related non-communicable diseases is estimated at $2 trillion per year, about 2.8% of global GDP (McKinsey, 2014). Influencing food environments for promoting healthy diets is an emerging strategy to address today’s nutrition challenges. more

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WHO Human Health Risk Assessment Toolkit: Chemical Hazards

World Health Organization WHO (2021) C_WHO

2nd edition. The purpose of the WHO human health risk assessment toolkit: chemical hazards is to provide its users with guidance to identify, acquire and use the information needed to assess chemical hazards, exposures and the corresponding health risks in their given health risk assessment contexts... more

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Covid-19 pandemic impact on maternal and child health services access in Nampula, Mozambique: a mixed methods research

das Neves Martins Pires P.H. , Macaringue C. , Abdirazak A. et al. BMC Health Services (2021) CC

The Covid-19 pandemic has so far infected more than 30 million people in the world, having major impact on global health with collateral damage. In Mozambique, a public state of emergency was declared at the end of March 2020. This has limited people's movements and reduced public services, leading ...to a decrease in the number of people accessing health care facilities. An implementation research project, The Alert Community for a Prepared Hospital, has been promoting access to maternal and child health care, in Natikiri, Nampula, for the last four years. Nampula has the second highest incidence of Covid-19. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of Covid-19 pandemic Government restrictions on access to maternal and child healthcare services. We compared health centres in Nampula city with healthcare centres in our research catchment area. We wanted to see if our previous research interventions have led to a more resilient response from the community. METHODS: Mixed-methods research, descriptive, cross-sectional, retrospective, using a review of patient visit documentation. We compared maternal and child health care unit statistical indicators from March-May 2019 to the same time-period in 2020. We tested for significant changes in access to maternal and child health services, using KrushKall Wallis, One-way Anova and mean and standard deviation tests. We compared interviews with health professionals, traditional birth attendants and patients in the two areas. We gathered data from a comparable city health centre and the main city referral hospital. The Marrere health centre and Marrere General Hospital were the two Alert Community for a Prepared Hospital intervention sites. RESULTS: Comparing 2019 quantitative maternal health services access indicators with those from 2020, showed decreases in most important indicators: family planning visits and elective C-sections dropped 28%; first antenatal visit occurring in the first trimester dropped 26%; hospital deliveries dropped a statistically significant 4% (p = 0.046), while home deliveries rose 74%; children vaccinated down 20%. CONCLUSION: Our results demonstrated the negative collateral effects of Covid-19 pandemic Government restrictions, on access to maternal and child healthcare services, and highlighted the need to improve the health information system in Mozambique. more

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It’s time to listen to young people and cut carbon, clear the air and improve health

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2021) C2

Preliminary fndings from a global survey of urban young people on the air they breathe and a child health co-benefts analysis of radical decarbonisation of 16 global cities.

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The impact of climate change on global child health - position statement

Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (2021) C2

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health recognises that climate change is an existential threat to the health and wellbeing of children and young people. In October 2020, we joined national health and academic alliances to declare climate change an emergency requiring accelerated col... more

National guidance and district-level practices in the supervision of community health workers in South Africa: a qualitative study

Assegaai, T. and H. Schneider Human Resources for Health (2019) C1

Supportive supervision is considered critical to community health worker programme performance, but there is relatively little understanding of how it can be sustainably done at scale. Supportive supervision is a holistic concept that encompasses three key functions: management (ensuring performance... more

Kenya Health Sector Strategic Plan 2018-2023

World Health Organisation (2018) C_WHO

Transforming Health Systems: Achieving Universal Health Coverage by 2022. The development of the Kenya Health Sector Strategic Plan 2018–2023 is guided by the Constitution of 2010, the Kenya Vision 2030 and the Kenya Health Policy 2014–2030.

Don’t pollute my future! The impact of the environment on children’s health

World Health Organization WHO (2017) C_WHO

In 2015, 5.9 million children under age five died (1). The major causes of child deaths globally are pneumonia, prematurity, intrapartum-related complications, neonatal sepsis, congenital anomalies, diarrhoea, injuries and malaria (2). Most of these diseases and conditions are at least partially cau... more

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The Impact of Climate Change on Mental Health: A Systematic Descriptive Review

Cianconi, P.; Betrò, S.; Janiri, L. (2020) CC

BackgroundClimate change is one of the great challenges of our time. The consequences of climate change on exposed biological subjects, as well as on vulnerable societies, are a concern for the entire scientific community. Rising temperatures, heat waves, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, fir... more

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Climate change and mental health: risks, impacts and priority actions

Katie Hayes, G. Blashki, J. Wiseman et al. International Journal of Mental Health Systems (2018) CC

This article provides an overview of the current and projected climate change risks and impacts to mental health and provides recommendations for priority actions to address the mental health consequences of climate change.

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Global priorities for climate change and mental health research

Fiona Charlson, Suhailah Ali, Jura Augustinavicius et al. Environment International (2022) CC

Compared with other health areas, the mental health impacts of climate change have received less research attention. The literature on climate change and mental health is growing rapidly but is characterised by several limitations and research gaps. In a field where the need for designing evidence-b... more

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Public health and climate change adaptation policies in the European Union

World Health Organization WHO (2017) C_WHO

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Climate change and Human Health : risks and responses

World Health Organization (WHO) (2003) CC

Over the ages, human societies have altered local ecosystems and modified regional climates. Today the human influence has attained a global scale. This reflects the recent rapid increase in population size, energy consumption, intensity of land use, international trade and travel, and other human a... more

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Climate Solutions Double as Health Interventions

Mailloux, N.A. et al. (2021) CC

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18(24), 13339; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413339 The climate crisis threatens to exacerbate numerous climate-sensitive health risks, including heatwave mortality, malnutrition from reduced crop yields, water- and vector-borne infectious diseases, and... more

Responding to outbreaks of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens in health-care facilities: guidance for the Western Pacific region

World Health Organization WHO (2022) C_WHO

Responding to Outbreaks of Antimicrobial-resistant Pathogens in Health-care Facilities: Guidance for the Western Pacific Region is developed following requests from Member States in the Western Pacific Region for additional information and support in managing AMR outbreaks. It aims to provide: a ste... more

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Responding to child maltreatment: a clinical handbook for health professionals

World Health Organisation (WHO) (2022) C_WHO

This handbook is intended primarily for front-line health care providers who are likely to see children (among other clients) in their day-to-day practice. These may include general practitioners, nurses, midwives, gynaecologists, paediatricians, mental health professionals, first responders and st... more

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Red and processed meat in the context of health and the environment: many shades of red and green: information brief

World Health Organisation (WHO) (2023) C_WHO

There is growing international consensus that food systems transformation is important to address the challenges of malnutrition in all its forms, the burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), environmental sustainability, increasing inequality and ensuring the welfare of workers and animals. In li... more

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Financing Global Health 2016: Development Assistance, Public and Private Health Spending for the Pursuit of Universal Health Coverage

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) (2017) C2

Financing Global Health 2016: Development Assistance, Public and Private Health Spending for the Pursuit of Universal Health Coverage presents a complete analysis of the resources available for health in 184 countries, with a particular focus on development assistance for health (DAH). DAH was estim... more

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Countdown to 2015: an analysis of donor funding for prenatal and neonatal health, 2003–2013

Pitt, C.; C. Grollman; M. Martínez-Álvarez et al. BMJ Global Health (2017) C1

Background: In 2015, 5.3 million babies died in the third trimester of pregnancy and first month following birth. Progress in reducing neonatal mortality and stillbirth rates has lagged behind the substantial progress in reducing postneonatal and maternal mortality rates. The benefits to prenatal an... more

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Financing Global Health 2015: Development assistance steady on the path to new Global Goals

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (2016) CC

Financing Global Health 2015 is the seventh edition of IHME’s annual series on global health financing. This report captures trends in development assistance for health (DAH) and government health expenditure as source (GHE-S) in low- and middle-income countries. Annually updated GHE-S and DAH est... more