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Population Ageing & Global Health

February 10, 2019
Global Health, Human Development, Learn, Public Health, Writings
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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

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The Path To Humanizing Medicine: An Essay

June 17, 2012
Culture, Live, Medicine, Public Health, Science, Technology
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I recently came across one of the essays I wrote during my senior year at New York University in Spring ’11. At that time I was taking two of the most eye-opening and informative classes I have participated in to this date: Philosophy of Medicine and Visual Culture of Science and Technology.

Philosophy of Medicine explored how our society approaches medicine as a whole: What do we believe medicine should do for us? When should we access it? How? What roles do/should medical professionals play? What is their relationship and duty to their patient?

The second class, Visual Culture of Science and Technology, examined how our society reacts, shifts and changes with the introduction of new technologies and media. The majority of the class did focus on medical technology, and how advances in the field have shaped the knowledge and behavior of both medical personal and the general public.

Needless to say, both topics were absolutely fascinating, and the fact that each class was led by top-tier professors, Dr. Brad Lewis, a licensed physician and cultural theorists, and Prof. Marita Sturken, the Chair of NYU’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, only enhanced the experience overall.

As I was milling over the topics in these separate classes, I could not help notice a great deal overlap and some connecting themes. Ultimately, I decided to formulate an independent project in which I connected the two disperate classes via an essay piece that tried to use the tools provided by these classes in order to analyze the “dominant culture” of medicine (i.e medicine as practiced in western, industrial nations), and how our current medical practices are failing to provide optimum levels of healing for patients.

Now, after dusting it off and re-editing my work over these past couple of days, I find myself wanting to re-write the whole piece entirely to include the new knowledge and experience that I have gained over the course of this past year. But that is not the point. The piece is genuine and honest in its search for understanding. It explores over-arching themes of caring vs. curing, molecularization of the body via technology, the influence of visual mediums on medicine, and the structure of science in society.

It’s a longer read, but I do hope you enjoy it. And of course, feedback and idea contributions are always welcome. Click the link below for the PDF.

The Path to Humanizing Medicine