Editorial 1
Editorial
This Update issue was first conceived by IHDP’s health advisory group at the IHDP Open Meeting in 2009. Since then, questions about the links between global change, health and the environment have become more critical to human well-being. For example, extreme events in different parts of the world (e.g. H1N1A), made the global community aware of how rapidly emergent diseases can be widely transmitted virtually anywhere. While the natural science and medical communities have had a head start in drawing together the connections between health and the environment, it has become increasingly apparent that the IHDP community has a key role to play in addressing health as a cross-cutting issue. As a starting point, we invited a group of renowned scientists to contribute their thoughts and work on three themes: Firstly concerning areas of research where IHDP’s community could contribute at the conceptual level; secondly, on examples of research already taking place in various regions; and thirdly, to suggest emerging topics which need to be addressed. This issue opens with a paper by Pim Martens and his colleagues, who introduce a novel conceptual framework for globalisation and health, further identifying various policy areas (e.g.
the Millennium Development Goals) where research needs to be done. Loraine Elliott reminds us that our research needs to be situated within a framework of ethics and governance. She makes a strong link to the research agenda of IHDP’s Earth System Governance Project. An issue that is vexing governments everywhere is to find new and better ways of detecting disease outbreaks as early as possible. On this front, Alexandra Ziemann et al. describe a European initiative to develop tools for syndromic disease surveillance. Ursula Oswald Spring’s contribution is directed at public policies to enhance health security in the context of global change and social science research. The next group of papers give substance to the ideas and issues raised through research carried out in various regional settings. Manuel Caesario and his colleagues describe various projects in Amazonia where they have been working for a number of years on vector-borne diseases that are spreading as a result of deforestation, land use change, and the lack of cross-border cooperation, which further exacerbate the impacts on human health. The major health challenges caused by internal human migration are addressed by Jennifer Holdaway and her colleagues, with a
focus on the rapid social and economic changes taking place in China. Dhaka, Bangladesh, is the setting for the paper by Oliver Gruebner et al., as megacities have long been of interest to the IHDP community (cf. Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project - UGEC). This contribution focuses our attention on their health implications. Nowhere are the impacts of climate change being felt as immediately as in the Pacific Small Islands States, where Sarah Lovell studies health governance and reports on some of her findings. The last three papers take us in new directions, calling for broader ways of thinking across regions, the crucial role that health literacy plays, and calling for social scientists to take up a more prominent role in global change and health. Osman Sankoh and Yazoume Ye discuss the potential of a demographic surveillance system for two of the regions of the world where Malaria is endemic and having the greatest impacts on human health. Kristine Sorenson’s focus on health literacy focuses on sustainability and equity. From his years of experience in senior positions in Ministries of Health in South Asia and the World Health Organization, Abdul-Sattar Yoosuf completes this collection with an argument that the IHDP community needs to have a greater say in global change and human health. IHDP, along with the other global change programmes (IGBP, DIVERSITAS, WCRP), have endorsed the Earth System Science Partnership Joint Project on Global Environmental Change and Human Health (GECHH) to spearhead research on global change and human health. We hope this issue of Update stimulates the IHDP community to embrace the challenges identified by its contributors, as well as others not mentioned, and to play an expanded role in the GECHH Project. Thomas Krafft, Gabriela Litre, Mark W. Rosenberg, and Lucilla Spini
IHDP Update Issue 1, 2011