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The paper presents an analysis of policy directives needed to respond to threats of harm (e.g., violence against third parties) that may arise in the course of conducting descriptive epidemiological research with high-risk populations. It identifies two key areas where new policies must be developed to guide researchers conducting such investigations. The paper recommends that: (1) an NIH consensus panel be convened to set standards, analogous to Common Toxicity Criteria (CTC) criteria, to classify the severity of different types of indirect, non-research-related risk; and (2) case-based training modules be developed and incorporated into public health research ethics courses and training programs, to enhance researcher judgments in determining the likelihood of harm in different situations. In addition, researchers, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and community advisory groups must consider the issue of staff safety and the effectiveness of available responses to reduce the threat of harm. The author reviews and discusses implications for informed consent and IRB review.Journal of Public Health Policy (2006) 27, 293–308. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jphp.3200084 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the first meeting of the American Public Health Association in 1873, epidemiology and epidemiologists have been central to the activities of the organization. At that meeting, the most prominent American physician of the time, Austin Flint, presented a classic paper entitled "Relations of Water to the Propagation of Fever." In that remarkable paper, Flint reinterpreted observations on the North Boston, N.Y. typhoid fever epidemic made 30 years earlier in which he had correctly concluded that the epidemic had been propagated by contagion, but incorrectly concluded that transmission was not the result of contaminated drinking water. During the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th, Annual Meetings of the APHA were frequently the locus for reports of epidemic investigations and the Journal of the Association was the vehicle for their publication. When the Association was reorganized to include discipline-oriented sections, the Epidemiology Section was among the first to be established. At the time, 1929, the Section was the only meeting place (outside the small and exclusive American Epidemiological Society) for epidemiologists to exchange ideas and information. The Section was also a place where public health policies were hotly debated. After World War II, academic departments of epidemiology increasingly focused the field on methodological issues and etiological investigations. Furthermore, new organizations and a plethora of epidemiological journals flooded the field. Thus, the Epidemiology Section has remained a major center for translating epidemiological knowledge into policy and is likely to intensify that function in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the author's experiences and perceptions of the neoliberal triad of anti-health reforms--government budget cutting, deregulation, and privatization--which have been promulgated worldwide by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The causes of this phenomenon are analyzed, and specific alternative health policies are recommended. The role of epidemiology in documenting the damages to health resulting from the anti-health reforms is discussed. Finally, the paper emphasizes the need not only for national organizational strategies but for action on the international level. The opponents of privatization need to meet together, to exchange experiences, and to develop effective strategies on a world scale that can be applied in industrial and developing nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development of a pilot project to test the implementation of an epidemiological surveillance system for intentional (violent) and non-intentional injuries, at emergency departments in selected hospitals in five African countries applying the World Health Organization's guidelines. We outline obstacles and opportunities encountered during the process. By definition, a surveillance system systematically collects, reviews, and evaluates information to understand the context in which specific injuries occur. Implementation in diverse sociocultural environments in Zambia, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, and Kenya has provided an opportunity to gather reliable data on injuries for comparisons between these countries. Analysis of the detailed information may permit researchers to generate evidence-based recommendations. Addressed to public authorities, and health authorities in particular, they can help address injury incidence in their communities from a public health perspective.Journal of Public Health Policy (2007) 28, 432–441. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jphp.3200154 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a reprint of the article Deaths Among Taxpayers and Non-Taxpayers, Income Tax, Providence, 1865, by Charles V. Chapin, which appeared in the 1924 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The adjusted death rate was higher among the non-taxpayers in every group of diseases except two; namely, certain general diseases represented by few deaths and the puerperal diseases. It is probably fairly indicative to use the children under one year of age as a base and according to this method the death rate for the puerperal diseases is 16.4 per 1,000 children among the taxpayers and 12.2 among the non-taxpayers. Opportunities for fecal contamination were in 1865 enormously greater among the poor and there was no municipal water supply. Pulmonary tuberculosis has always been a disease of poverty. Among the non-taxpayers, of the 34 deaths from diseases of the nervous system, under twenty years, it is probable that the large majority were due to some form of meningitis or encephalitis. There is very little difference between the two groups in the small number of deaths from genito-urinary diseases. Mortality attributed to old age is more than four times as great among non-taxpayers as among the taxpayers. Another point of interest is the relative prevalence of the so-called degenerative diseases of advancing years.

This paper analyses the anti-health policies and programs that are being pursued by neoliberal governments on a global scale, and that are being sold to the public by labeling them as "health reforms." The role of epidemiologists in this situation is to strengthen oppositionto these anti-health reforms by documenting their effects on preventive and therapeutic health services and on the health status of the population. Major difficulties in this regard are discussed. There is a great need for epidemiologists to move boldly forward to attack themajor diseases that afflict the Americas today. Two examples of high-priority programs are discussed: the achievement of safe water supplies by newly developed, low-cost community-based initiatives, and thelong overdue organization of effective campaigns against cardiovascular disease. The establishment of specific, concrete Health Objectives at all levels of government -- national, state/provincial, and local -- must become the central focus of public health policy and actionthroughout the Americas. Epidemiologists are urged to take leadership in advocating and achieving this fundamentally epidemiologic approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]