Global Health

Introducing Global Health Part III: Key Challenges in Global Health 

 

Chapter 12 - Globalization, Internal Conflict, and the Resource Curse

While globalization can bring advances in health, technology, and global prosperity, it also presents challenges for public health. Many protest a specific part of globalization: trade liberalization.  Advocates for stronger international regulations on free trade realize the unintended side effects of free trade. Globalization can bring many consequences:

• Ability of diseases to spread rapidly across borders

• Damage to local economies

• Incentives for corrupt leaders and businessmen to control resource-rich but weakly governed nations

• Spillover effects of civil wars and internal violence (i.e. displacement of people, disruption of food supplies, and loss of economic opportunity among innocent bystanders)

One main problem is that global governance bodies have not caught up with the trends in global public health problems. Decisions are made without public votes, and these decisions are usually influenced by the goal to maximize trade profits, rather than focusing on saving lives. The resource course, or "paradox of plenty," refers to the problems developing countries face when natural wealth does not help improve the country's situation, but rather contributes to the decline of economic, social, and human development. 
Policy makers must address the revision of trade agreements and how wealth created from natural resources can be distributed in a transparent manner. 

 

Chapter 13 - Frontiers in Global Health
We must understand that health outcomes are shaped by various levels: international, national, local, and individual. Population health is shaped by a complex interplay among biology, individual psychology, and the social and physical environment. New frontiers in global public health are being explored as researchers utilize more complex models for understanding how the factors above interact to shape public health. Some of these models consider complex feedback loops that can subvert policy makers' intentions. New policy interventions are being tried that attempt to shape human psychology, relying on more incentives for changing behavior rather than merely providing health education.
Growing fields in global health include:

• Social policy interventions such as conditional cash transfers and extensive local children's centers

• Syndemic theory with computer models that can account for multiple levels of disease causation (syndemic refers to the ways disease patterns magnify the effect of each factor)

• Systems theory/systems dynamics (understanding the interaction of systems and their counterintuitive results)

 

Link to developing countries
Many nations' internal markets are fragile, and floods of cheap goods from other countries can lead to increased unemployment and worse poverty. For example, agricultural products are subsidized by foreign governments. This leads to unfair competition for impoverished nations that cannot subsidize their own goods.

South African welfare programs generally have conditions that are not easily monitored and can be easily bent. Furthermore, the said benefits these programs provide are very meager so that parents struggle to meet vague conditions while losing more money.

 

Questions & Ethics
What can be done to address the aftermath of a conflict in the absence of a global governance structure? Aid cannot replace a solid political institution.
How can general themes in social policy interventions be applied to varying types of governments and cultures?