Introduction

For the first time in history, our world is ageing. That is, the number of individuals 65 years and above in the world has caught up and will soon out number children under the age of 5 years.¹ This poses a significant global health issue that threatens to impact the healthcare systems, economies, and social structures of nations worldwide.

We will explore the obstacles caused by global population ageing and highlight why this is global health issue that deserves attention and action. But first, it is important to understand how we define a ‘global health’ issue.

Scholar Jeffery Koplan suggests that ‘global health’ has evolved from principals that overlap with ‘public health’—broadly defined as population-based efforts to protect and promote health and wellbeing within a society—and ‘international health’—the application of (public) health interventions within low- and middle-income countries.² Although all three terms are intimately related by similar founding principals, ‘global health’ evokes a nuance that is necessary to articulate in order for parties to cohesively identify and act on issues.

The defining principal of global health, which separates it from public health and international health, lies within the concepts of ‘stakeholders’ and ‘investors’: whose health and wellbeing is under threat from insults—biological, psychological, or social—or benefiting from intervention; and who is providing the means for those beneficial interventions to be carried out. In public health, both stakeholders and investors are widely domestic; in international health, stakeholders are low- and middle-income countries, but investors are largely high-income countries (e.g. foreign aid).²

However in global health, there is no single stakeholder or investor, and the relationship between the two is not linear. Rather, global health addresses issues surrounding health that affect or are affected by transnational (multinational) circumstances, so that low-, middle- and high-income countries are situated in a network of accountability as both stakeholders and investors.

This essay will attempt to demonstrate that population ageing is an important global health issue by:

Exploring current trends in population ageing
Establishing the impacts of global ageing
Discussing measures to address this issue

Northern Surgical Skills Conference, UK

April 21, 2014

Live, Med School, Medicine, Science, Writings

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The Northern Surgical Skills Conference (NSSC) is a national conference held in UK in order to give medical students a better understanding of what a career path in surgery entails. The conference is an all-day event that features guest speakers from the field, opportunities to practice basic surgical skills, such as suturing and laparoscopy, and presentations from student researchers.

As a member of the 2014 NSSC Committee, I have had the rewarding experience of planning and coordinating this year’s event that is to be held on Saturday, May 17th. As we are drawing closer to the date and finalizing the last details, I stumbled upon a reflection that I wrote after attending last year’s conference as a first-year medical student. I feel that the piece highlights the importance of early exposure to different specialities for medical students; especially considering how the medical world is becoming filled with ever-increasing niche roles, requiring students to distinguish sooner-rather-than-later the path they wish to take.