Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

The environment affects our health in a variety of ways. The interaction between human health and the environment has been extensively studied and environmental risks have been proven to significantly impact human health, either directly by exposing people to harmful agents, or indirectly, by disrupting life-sustaining ecosystems [1]. Although the exact contribution of environmental factors to the development of death and disease cannot be precisely determined, the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that thirteen million deaths annually are attributable to preventable environmental causes [1]. The report also estimates that 24% of the global disease burden (healthy life years lost) and 23% of all deaths (premature mortality) are attributable to environmental factors, with the environmental burden of diseases being 15 times higher in developing countries than in developed countries, due to differences in exposure to environmental risks and access to health care.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

 

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However, huge economic development and population growth result in continuing environmental degradation. Intensification of agriculture, industrialization and increasing energy use are the most severe driving forces of environmental health problems. For countries in the early stages of development the major environmental hazards to health are associated with widespread poverty and severe lack of public infrastructure, such as access to drinking water, sanitation, and lack of health care as well as emerging problems of industrial pollution. However, environmental health hazards are not limited to the developing world. Although at a lesser extend, environmental risks are also present in wealthier countries and are primarily attributed to urban air and water pollution. Occurrences of Asthma are rising dramatically throughout the developed countries, and environmental factors appear to be at least partly to blame [1]. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [2] synthesis report warns that the erosion of ecosystems could lead to an increase in existing diseases such as malaria and cholera, as well as a rising risk of new diseases emerging.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Climate change is also posing risks to human population health and well-being and thus is emerging as a serious concern worldwide [3–6]. In 2000 climate change was estimated to be responsible for approximately 2.4% of worldwide diarrhoea and 6% of malaria [1]. According to the IPCC third assessment report the world temperature is expected to further rise during the century, implying increased health threats for human populations, especially in low-income countries. Reviewing the US literature addressing health impacts of climate variability and change Ebi et al. [7], conclude that climate change is expected to increase morbidity and mortality risks from climate-sensitive health outcomes such as extreme heat events, floods, droughts and fires. A spread in vector–borne diseases, like malaria, is also expected [8,9]. A study in Mexico revealed that lower greenhouse gases emissions would result in avoidance of some 64,000 premature deaths over a twenty year period [4]. Leading death causes worldwide (2004) are summarized in Table 1.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Humans interact with the environment constantly. These interactions affect quality of life, years of healthy life lived, and health disparities. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines environment, as it relates to health, as “all the physical, chemical, and biological factors external to a person, and all the related behaviors.”1 Environmental health consists of preventing or controlling disease, injury, and disability related to the interactions between people and their environment.

The Healthy People 2020 Environmental Health objectives focus on 6 themes, each of which highlights an element of environmental health:

  1. Outdoor air quality
  2. Surface and ground water quality
  3. Toxic substances and hazardous wastes
  4. Homes and communities
  5. Infrastructure and surveillance
  6. Global environmental health

Creating healthy environments can be complex and relies on continuing research to better understand the effects of exposure to environmental hazards on people’s health.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Why Is Environmental Health Important?

Maintaining a healthy environment is central to increasing quality of life and years of healthy life. Globally, 23% of all deaths and 26% of deaths among children under age 5 are due to preventable environmental factors.1 Environmental factors are diverse and far reaching. They include:

  • Exposure to hazardous substances in the air, water, soil, and food
  • Natural and technological disasters
  • Climate change
  • Occupational hazards
  • The built environment

Poor environmental quality has its greatest impact on people whose health status is already at risk. Therefore, environmental health must address the societal and environmental factors that increase the likelihood of exposure and disease.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Outdoor Air Quality
Poor air quality is linked to premature death, cancer, and long-term damage to respiratory and cardiovascular systems. Progress has been made to reduce unhealthy air emissions, but in 2008, approximately 127 million people lived in U.S. counties that exceeded national air quality standards.2 Decreasing air pollution is an important step in creating a healthy environment.

Surface and Ground Water
Surface and ground water quality concerns apply to both drinking water and recreational waters. Contamination by infectious agents or chemicals can cause mild to severe illness. Protecting water sources and minimizing exposure to contaminated water sources are important parts of environmental health.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Toxic Substances and Hazardous Wastes
The health effects of toxic substances and hazardous wastes are not yet fully understood. Research to better understand how these exposures may impact health is ongoing. Meanwhile, efforts to reduce exposures continue. Reducing exposure to toxic substances and hazardous wastes is fundamental to environmental health.

Homes and Communities
People spend most of their time at home, work, or school. Some of these environments may expose people to:

  • Indoor air pollution
  • Inadequate heating and sanitation
  • Structural problems
  • Electrical and fire hazards
  • Lead-based paint hazards
When one hears the phrase “global warming,” what often comes to mind is melting ice caps and warmer winters but most people are horribly unaware of the effects that global warming will have on human health. Food shortages, contaminated water, extreme weather, and deadly heat threaten the world because of the warming temperatures of our earth. The effects of these can be seen today and their influence will be magnified in the not-so-distant future. But the most dangerous threat we face from global warming is the spread of disease.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment PaperHuman health has always been influenced by climate and weather. Changes in climate and climate variability, particularly changes in weather extremes, affect the environment that provides us with clean air, food, water, shelter, and security. Climate change, together with other natural and human-made health stressors, threatens human health and well-being in numerous ways. Some of these health impacts are already being experienced in the United States.

Given that the impacts of climate change are projected to increase over the next century, certain existing health threats will intensify and new health threats may emerge. Connecting our understanding of how climate is changing with an understanding of how those changes may affect human health can inform decisions about mitigating (reducing) the amount of future climate change, suggest priorities for protecting public health, and help identify research needs.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Health care is moving into the home increasingly often and involving a mixture of people, a variety of tasks, and a broad diversity of devices and technologies; it is also occurring in a range of residential environments. The factors driving this migration include the rising costs of providing health care; the growing numbers of older adults; the increasing prevalence of chronic disease; improved survival rates of various diseases, injuries, and other conditions (including those of fragile newborns); large numbers of veterans returning from war with serious injuries; and a wide range of technological innovations. The health care that results varies considerably in its safety, effectiveness, and efficiency, as well as its quality and cost.

The committee was charged with examining this major trend in health care delivery and resulting challenges from only one of many perspectives: the study of human factors. From the outset it was clear that the dramatic and evolving change in health care practice and policies presents a broad array of opportunities and problems. Consequently the committee endeavored to maintain focus specifically on how using the human factors approach can provide solutions that support maximizing the safety and quality of health care delivered in the home while empowering both care recipients and caregivers in the effort.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

The meaning of health has evolved over time. In keeping with the biomedical perspective, early definitions of health focused on the theme of the body's ability to function; health was seen as a state of normal function that could be disrupted from time to time by disease. An example of such a definition of health is: "a state characterized by anatomic, physiologic, and psychological integrity; ability to perform personally valued family, work, and community roles; ability to deal with physical, biological, psychological, and social stress".[7] Then in 1948, in a radical departure from previous definitions, the World Health Organization (WHO) proposed a definition that aimed higher: linking health to well-being, in terms of "physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".[8] Although this definition was welcomed by some as being innovative, it was also criticized as being vague, excessively broad and was not construed as measurable. For a long time, it was set aside as an impractical ideal and most discussions of health returned to the practicality of the biomedical model Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Just as there was a shift from viewing disease as a state to thinking of it as a process, the same shift happened in definitions of health. Again, the WHO played a leading role when it fostered the development of the health promotion movement in the 1980s. This brought in a new conception of health, not as a state, but in dynamic terms of resiliency, in other words, as "a resource for living". 1984 WHO revised the definition of health defined it as "the extent to which an individual or group is able to realize aspirations and satisfy needs and to change or cope with the environment. Health is a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living; it is a positive concept, emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities".[10]Thus, health referred to the ability to maintain homeostasis and recover from insults. Mental, intellectual, emotional and social health referred to a person's ability to handle stress, to acquire skills, to maintain relationships, all of which form resources for resiliency and independent living.[9] This opens up many possibilities for health to be taught, strengthened and learned.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

 

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Since the late 1970s, the federal Healthy People Initiative has been a visible component of the United States’ approach to improving population health.[11][12] In each decade, a new version of Healthy People is issued,[13] featuring updated goals and identifying topic areas and quantifiable objectives for health improvement during the succeeding ten years, with assessment at that point of progress or lack thereof. Progress has been limited to many objectives, leading to concerns about the effectiveness of Healthy People in shaping outcomes in the context of a decentralized and uncoordinated US health system. Healthy People 2020 gives more prominence to health promotion and preventive approaches and adds a substantive focus on the importance of addressing social determinants of health. A new expanded digital interface facilitates use and dissemination rather than bulky printed books as produced in the past. The impact of these changes to Healthy People will be determined in the coming years.[14]

Systematic activities to prevent or cure health problems and promote good health in humans are undertaken by health care providers. Applications with regard to animal health are covered by the veterinary sciences. The term "healthy" is also widely used in the context of many types of non-living organizations and their impacts for the benefit of humans, such as in the sense of healthy communities, healthy cities or healthy environments. In addition to health care interventions and a person's surroundings, a number of other factors are known to influence the health status of individuals, including their background, lifestyle, and economic, social conditions and spirituality; these are referred to as "determinants of health." Studies have shown that high levels of stress can affect human health Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

The conclusions and recommendations presented below reflect the most critical steps that the committee thinks should be taken to improve the state of health care in the home, based on the literature reviewed in this report examined through a human factors lens. They are organized into four areas: (1) health care technologies, including medical devices and health information technologies involved in health care in the home; (2

caregivers and care recipients; (3) residential environments for health care; and (4) knowledge gaps that require additional research and development. Although many issues related to home health care could not be addressed, applications of human factors principles, knowledge, and research methods in these areas could make home health care safer and more effective and also contribute to reducing costs. The committee chose not to prioritize the recommendations, as they focus on various aspects of health care in the home and are of comparable importance to the different constituencies affected.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

HEALTH CARE TECHNOLOGIES

Health care technologies include medical devices that are used in the home as well as information technologies related to home-based health care. The four recommendations in this area concern (1) regulating technologies for health care consumers, (2) developing guidance on the structure and usability of health information technologies, (3) developing guidance and standards for medical device labeling, and (4) improving adverse event reporting systems for medical devices. The adoption of these recommendations would improve the usability and effectiveness of technology systems and devices, support users in understanding and learning to use them, and improve feedback to government and industry that could be used to further improve technology for home care.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Regulation

Ensuring the safety of emerging technologies is a challenge, in part because it is not always clear which federal agency has regulatory authority and what regulations must be met. Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has responsibility for devices, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has similar authority with respect to health information technology. However, the dividing line between medical devices and health information technology is blurring, and many new systems and applications are being developed that are a combination of the two, although regulatory oversight has remained divided. Because regulatory responsibility for them is unclear, these products may fall into the gap.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

The committee did not find a preponderance of evidence that knowledge is lacking for the design of safe and effective devices and technologies for use in the home. Rather than discovering an inadequate evidence base, we were troubled by the insufficient attention directed at the development of devices that account, necessarily and properly, for users who are inadequately trained or not trained at all. Yet these new users often must

When you talk about information technology, it has a significant hand in improving the status in the fields of environmental education and human health as compared to that of the other respective areas such as business, economics, and culture or politics. The emerging growth of the internet services and facilities, geographic information system or GIS, and the data that gets transmitted through satellites, etc. have generated a higher affluence of the updated information on several aspects of the environment as well as health. When you look for the variety of software in the market, you will come across a number of them that created for the health and environment studies in a better way. They are quite user-friendly and certainly help a learner to understand the respective subject with ease.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

We have long believed that “good” immune cells recognise and defend against “bad” invaders. That’s why a large proportion of medicine has been directed at killing microbial enemies and conquering microbial infections.

This militaristic understanding of immunity reflected the culture of the 20th century, which was dominated by nation building and world wars between “us” and “them.” It was a time when “survival of the fittest” came to be seen as the driver of evolution and competition and war were considered a natural part of what it is to be human.

But a radical shift in understanding the relationship between humans and microorganisms occurred with the discovery that only 50% of the cells in our bodies are human. The rest are microbes, such as bacteria, yeasts (members of the fungus family), viruses, and even insects. Together, these make up the microbiome.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

The 23,000 genes that comprise the human genome pale in comparison with the 3.3 million genes in the microbes that live in our guts. These produce proteins that help us digest food and support our immune systems.

Through the gut-brain axis, these genes even influence mood and memory. The gut-brain axis is a set of communication pathways between the gut and brain occurring largely through the actions of the gut microbiome.

Because we have evolved with microorganisms inside us, we now have specialised communities in our guts, on our skin, and in our mouths. Our microbes are understood to be so critical to our existence, many scientists consider us to be symbiotic organisms, made up of the host, the microbiome and the environment. This holy trinity is what they call the “holobiont”.

Working out is healthy, I think everybody got the point by now…  You see fit figures everywhere on social media, advertisements for diets, fitness programs, gym memberships… it is all there just about anywhere you look.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

However working out MAY take time (I insist on the conditional form here) and energy, so as with everything, you need to find your WHY. Why you will spend that ‘extra’ time, why is important to YOU, what will THIS bring or will not bring to your life? Though you may find inspiration in others, it will vary with everybody, and what’s important is that those reasons are strong enough for YOU to keep you going even on days you do not feel like it at all.

I personally workout regularly, I even feel guilty if I do not have a physical activity once a day, 6 days/week.  My reasons for this have changed over time, so quite naturally the form, type, intensity and duration of my workouts have as well.

In my 20s, I was mostly focused on having toned & rather thin legs: I could spend hours at the gym few times a week. After having kids, the physical goal was to fit back in my pre-pregnancy clothes and flatten that stomach and because of kids I would prefer working out at home or take them for a run in the stroller. Of course becoming a Mom gave a whole other meaning to working out: the healthy example and standard I show for my children, and the strength gained along the way.

But today if you ask me why do you workout? This is my simple WHY: it is a healthy habit to take care of my body to ensure it allows me to share as many magical memories as I can with my loved ones.

We are pretty active and outdoorsy, and I love that our family time reflect this as much as we can. Hiking, kayaking, skiing, swimming, biking, running, playground plays, … whatever activity we can do all outside is always a magical family time to us.

Like why do you brush you teeth everyday? To keep your teeth healthy and be able to use them as intended for as long as you can. Same goes for my body, but indeed, in an extremely more complex way as there are so many dimensions in it to consider.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

So to me, my workouts need to be as efficient as they can, and support and shape my body for the purposes stated above. Usually they translate to 30-40 minutes of at home workouts*, the program will depend on what I feel my body needs at the time being: strength, balance, flexibility, cardio etc. This way I do not lose time in commuting to a gym, I can do it when kids are sleeping or playing or while food is cooking… Or I’ll just take it outside with my crew! It’s been working the bet for me and I have enjoyed the variety I get. I do like to have some achievable and measurable health goals to motivate me on the short term: for instance that’s why I would sign up for races, triathlon or a specific workout program.

FRAMING THE ISSUE

Many of the most challenging ethical questions of our time address interactions between human health and the environment.  How should we regulate pesticides, industrial chemicals, and pollutants? Should we develop genetically modified organisms for use in agriculture, medicine, and energy production? How should we regulate them? Should we use genetically modified mosquitos to control mosquito-borne illnesses such as malaria and Zika virus? How should we ensure the safety of our food supply?  What steps should we take to reduce antibiotic resistance? Where should a community place a new solid waste facility? Where should a nation locate its hazardous or radioactive waste? What steps should we take to protect people from workplace hazards? Should we implement special workplace protections for pregnant or fertile women? How should we balance safety and affordability when establishing housing standards? Should we prohibit people from building homes in flood-prone areas? What steps should we take to mitigate or adapt to climate change? Should richer nations bear more of the responsibility than poorer ones? How should we regulate energy production and use to protect the environment and human health? Should we take steps to encourage democratic participation in environmental health decision-making?Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

The issues that arise in environmental health ethics are often complex, interdisciplinary, dynamic, and global in scope. Finding satisfactory solutions to environmental health problems will become increasingly important as the environmental impacts of human activities continue to mount and we learn more about the relationship between human health and the environment.

THE SCIENCE: ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH AND HAZARDS

All organisms depend on their environments for energy and materials needed to sustain life: clean air, potable water, nutritious food, and safe places to live. For most of human history, increases in longevity were due to improved access to these necessities.  Advances in agriculture, sanitation, water treatment, and hygiene have had a far greater impact on human health than medical technology.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Although the environment sustains human life, it can also cause diseases. Lack of basic necessities is a significant cause of human mortality.  Environmental hazards increase the risk of cancer, heart disease, asthma, and many other illnesses. These hazards can be physical, such as pollution, toxic chemicals, and food contaminants, or they can be social, such as dangerous work, poor housing conditions, urban sprawl, and poverty.

Unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation and hygiene are responsible for a variety of infectious diseases, such as schistosomiasis, diarrhea, cholera, meningitis, and gastritis.  In 2015, approximately 350,000 children under age 5 (mostly in the developing world) died from diarrheal diseases related to unsafe drinking water, and approximately 1.8 billion people used drinking water contaminated with feces.  More than 2 billion people lacked access to basic sanitation.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper


Environment-Related Illnesses

  • Cancer
  • Heart disease
  • Diabetes
  • Asthma
  • Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
  • Obesity
  • Occupational injuries
  • Arthritis
  • Parkinson’s disease
  • Malaria
  • Dysentery
  • Depression

By contrast, activities that promote health and extend human life can have adverse environmental effects. For example, food production causes environmental damage from pesticides and fertilizers, soil salinization, waste produced by livestock, carbon emissions from food manufacturing and transportation, deforestation, and over-fishing. Health care facilities also have adverse environmental impacts. Hospitals use large quantities of electricity and fossil fuels and produce medical wastes. To prevent some diseases, it may be necessary to damage the environment. For example, malaria was eradicated in the United States and other developed nations in the 1940s and 50s as a result of draining wetlands and spraying DDT to kill mosquitoes. A reduction in mortality from starvation or disease can lead to overpopulation, which stresses the environment in many different ways–increasing use of fossil fuels, clearing of land, generating pollution and waste, and so on.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

BIOETHICAL, SOCIAL, AND LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS

Relationships between human health and the environment raise many ethical, social, and legal dilemmas by forcing people to choose among competing values. These considerations can be grouped into the following categories.

Managing benefits and risks. Many of the issues at the intersection of health and the environment have to do with managing benefits and risks. For example, pesticides play an important role in increasing crop yields, but they can also pose hazards to human health and the environment. Alternatives to pesticide use create trade-offs in health. The extreme action of stopping all pesticide uses could significantly reduce agricultural productivity, leading to food shortages and increased food prices, which would, in turn, increase starvation in some parts of the world. Public health authorities have opted to regulate the use of pesticides to enhance food production while minimizing damage to the environment and human health. Energy production and use helps sustain human life, but it can also pose hazards to human health and the environment, such as air and water pollution, oil spills, and destruction of habitats.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

No issue demands greater care in balancing benefits and risks than global warming. A significant percentage of global climate change is due to the human production of greenhouse gases. Climate change is likely to cause tremendous harm to the environment and human health, but taking steps to drastically reduce greenhouse gases could have adverse consequences for global, national, and local economies, which would result in a general decline in human health and health care. For example, greatly increasing taxes on fossil fuels would encourage greater fuel efficiency and lower carbon dioxide emissions, but it would also increase the price of transportation, which would lead to widespread inflation and reduced consumer spending power.

 

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Environmental Risk Factors for Disease

  • Pollution
  • Microbes in air, water, or soil
  • Contaminants in food
  • Weather conditions (e.g. droughts, heat waves)
  • Natural disasters (e.g. hurricanes, earthquakes, floods)
  • Pesticides and other chemicals
  • Pests and parasites
  • Radiation
  • Poverty
  • Lack of access to health care Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

For many years some politicians and scholars argued that we should wait for more evidence of global warming before taking action, since the steps needed to prevent or minimize it could have disastrous economic consequences. Others have argued that society cannot afford to wait for complete evidence because the consequences of global climate change could be catastrophic and irreversible. This difference of opinion raises fundamental questions about the ethics of risk management: what is the role of scientific evidence in decision-making? Should we use risk/benefit or precautionary decision-making to develop environmental health policies?

Most regulatory agencies in the U.S make benefit/risk decisions based on information from scientific studies, such as chemical analysis, cell studies, animal experiments, and controlled clinical trials. Agencies often refrain from making regulatory decisions until they have complete scientific evidence. Many commentators and organizations have endorsed an alternative approach called the precautionary principle. The idea is that society should take reasonable steps to prevent or minimize irreversible and significant harm, even when scientific evidence is incomplete, and that regulatory decisions to avoid harm need not await the accumulation of complete scientific evidence. Although the precautionary principle has gained many adherents, especially in Europe and California, it remains controversial.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Social justice.  Managing benefits and risks raises social justice concerns. In general, people with lower socioeconomic status have greater exposure to certain detrimental environmental conditions in their homes or at work, such as lead, mercury, pesticides, toxic chemicals, or air and water pollution. Communities and nations should minimize such injustices when making decisions such as choosing a site for a factory, a power plant, or waste dump, or regulating safety in the workplace. The decision-making process should be fair, open, and democratic, so that people who will be affected by environmental risks have a voice in these deliberations and can make their concerns known.

When drafting and implementing environmental health regulations, it is important to consider vulnerable subpopulations. A vulnerable subpopulation is a group with an increased susceptibility to the adverse effects of an environmental risk factor, due to their age, genetics, health status, or some other condition. For example, children are more susceptible to the effects of lead, mercury, and some pesticides than adults. Some people have a genetic mutation that increases their susceptibility to cancer caused by passive smoking.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

If an environmental regulation is designed to protect average members of the population it may fail to adequately protect vulnerable subpopulations. Justice demands that we take care of people who are vulnerable. However, almost everyone in the population has an above-average susceptibility to at least one environmental risk factor. Since providing extra protections to everyone would be costly and impractical, protections must be meted out carefully and the populations who are vulnerable to a particular environmental risk factor must be defined clearly. For example, about 0.4% of the U.S. population has a severe allergic reaction to peanuts. Banning the sale of peanuts would be a costly and impractical way of protecting people with peanut allergies, but requiring that products containing peanuts be labeled clearly would be reasonable.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Social justice must be a factor in allocating resources for health care. Governments spend billions of dollars trying to improve the health of citizens and prevent diseases. These funds go to biomedical research, overseeing the safety of foods and drugs, enforcing environmental or occupational health regulations, and running programs for disaster preparedness, public health, health education, sanitation, water treatment, and so on. In the U.S., the lion’s share of health resources goes to providing medical diagnosis and treatment, but one might argue that it would be wiser to shift some resources to disease prevention programs, such as environmental protection, public health, and health education, since prevention is generally more cost-effective than treatment. Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Human rights. Various public health strategies pit the rights of individuals against the good of society, such as mandatory treatment, vaccination, or diagnostic testing; isolation and quarantine; and disease surveillance. The main argument for these public health strategies is that individual human rights may have to be limited to prevent the transmission of infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, SARS, HIV/AIDS, and pneumonia. But restrictions on rights should be well thought-out and safeguards put in place to prevent public health authorities from overstepping their bounds. Protecting the public’s health should not come at the expense of human rights. (See “Public Health Ethics and Law” chapter.)

Some health and environmental protections also limit property rights. The owner of a coal-burning power plant must deal with many laws concerning the operation of the plant, workplace safety, and carbon emissions. A developer who plans to build 150 new homes with land he has purchased may also have to deal with laws concerning storm drainage, water and sewage lines, gas lines, sidewalks, and so on. Restrictions on property rights are justified to protect human health and the environment. But opponents of these restrictions argue that they are often excessive or not adequately supported by scientific evidence.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Human rights issues also come up in research on environmental health that involves human subjects. For such research to be ethical, human subjects must give consent, and great care must be taken to ensure that they understand that they can opt out of the research project. Since the late 1990s, some pesticide companies have tested pesticides on human subjects to gather data to submit to the government for regulatory purposes. Some commentators charge that these experiments are unethical because they place people at unacceptably high risk without a clear benefit to society. Others have argued that the experiments, if properly designed and implemented, could produce important benefits to society by providing useful knowledge about the effects of pesticides, which could lead to stronger regulations.

EMERGING ISSUES

There are many new developments in science, technology, and industry that are bound to pose benefits and risks to the environment and human health. These include nanotechnology, genetic modification of plants and animals, antibiotic resistance, threats to food safety, and the growing market for biofuels. Longstanding challenges persist, including the preservation of ecosystems and endangered species and questions about animal experimentation. Many more developments will emerge. To deal with them in a responsible way, we must continue to research the relationship between human health and the environment and hold fair and democratic public deliberations, such as community forums, academic conferences, and legislative debates, involving participants with diverse cultural, socioeconomic, philosophic, and scientific perspectives.

To sum-up, I do not workout to have a 6 packs, super toned legs or reach a certain % body fat – if this happens along the way, I totally welcome and will applaud the results, but honestly – good or bad – this is not what will motivate me getting up and pressing play, or push harder, or watch what I eat. Again, I am just talking about my personal Whys, everybody has and needs their own and if these are yours, by all means GO FOR IT! I respect and encourage everybody who has set a strong purpose for themselves, that’s what keeps us going in life and that’s how incredible things happen. As I am sharing fitness and healthy tips here, it just felt important to me to share my personal objectives as well.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Environmental health is the field of public health focused on how chemicals, toxins, and other factors that people encounter every day impact health and how those impacts can be lessened. Everything someone eats, drinks, breathes, touches, sees, and experiences in their daily life affects their health. The goal of environmental health scientists and researches is to make those exposures and interactions more beneficial and less harmful.

Environmental health professionals look at exposures that may be hazardous to human health and determine how and why they affect health. The next step is to share that information widely so that people know what to avoid and how to they can make healthier decisions for themselves, their families, and the communities in which they live.

Environmental health is more than just how what people eat, drink, breathe, and come in contact with impacts health. There are many other facets to consider. Some of these are how we are exposed, how those exposures impact our genes, and what legal and policy implications might exist.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

We are exposed constantly to different types of environments. Some of those environments are supportive of health, such as nature. Others can be detrimental to our health, such as chemical contaminants.

A term coined in 2005 by Dr. Christopher Wild to encompass the totality of what we’re exposed from conception throughout life is the “exposome.” The human exposome is seen as the complement to the human genome. This concept supports using a systems approach to health (also known as an ecological model of health) because everything in the exposome interacts with everything else, creating a complex web of factors contributing to health or to disease. Gene-environment interactions are also part of this system.

Understanding how exposures can impact health has many components. Please know we are working to create a research summary highlighting concepts such as routes of exposure, why children aren’t little adults, critical windows of development, fetal origins of adult disease, biomonitoring and other science-based information related to exposures. In the meanwhile, you can find helpful some helpful explanations through the US Environmental Protection Agency’s resources on children’s exposures and toolbox for exposures.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Considering human life as a function of the microbiome and our environment allows us to acknowledge that we may be affected by entities that harbour different evolutionary needs. For example, our food choices don’t just affect human health through nutrients and caloric balance, but also through their impacts on the gut microbiome.

Health Information Technology (Health IT) is a broad term that describes the technology and infrastructure used to record, analyze, and share patient health data. Various technologies include health record systems, including personal, paper, and electronic; personal health tools including smart devices and apps; and finally, communities to share and discuss information. Some of this technology can tell the patient whether they need to go on a diet too, and most of the time the golo diet is what they should be doing or they should be taking Gynexin pill for gynecomastia like most men should be doing.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

The purpose of Health IT is to provide better care for patients and help achieve health equity. Health IT supports recording of patient data to improve healthcare delivery and allow for analysis of this information for both healthcare practitioners and ministry of health/government agencies. This data is used for the implementation of policies in order to better treat and prevent the spread of diseases.

Health IT improves the quality of healthcare delivery, increases patient safety, decreases medical errors, and strengthens the interaction between patients and healthcare providers. In low and middle-income countries (LMIC) the need for reliable and affordable medical record software is paramount. The OpenMRS community helps meet this specific need by developing and supporting the Open Medical Record System – an open-source electronic health record (EHR) platform, specifically designed for low-resource environments, and is completely free.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Patients that suffer from disease and ailments directly benefit from Health IT because of the improved level of care. The benefits of electronic health records include: Better health care by improving all aspects of patient care, including safety, effectiveness, patient-centeredness, communication, education, timeliness, efficiency, and equity.The use of Health IT in medical clinics improves the quality of healthcare that is delivered by providing accurate patient records and allows doctors to better understand the patient’s medical history. Having a comprehensive patient history empowers doctors to more accurately treat ailments and prevent over-prescribing medications which can be fatal. Without medical records, physician’s would need to depend on the patient’s memory, which can lead to inaccurate medical history due to forgetfulness, complex drug names, and ailments affecting the patient’s recollection.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

The OpenMRS community brings together software developers, senior medical and health care staff, implementers and organizers from around the globe with a wide range of skill sets to work collaboratively to develop the software to support health care in these areas. OpenMRS’ global community of over 1,200 volunteers from over 60 different countries and is the backbone of the software. Developers from all over the world contribute code to the reference application as well as provide technical support to their local implementing clinics. The OpenMRS community brings together software developers from around the globe with a wide range of skill sets to work collaboratively to develop the software to support health care in these areas. In addition, the community has a large pool of senior medical and healthcare staff, who are also informaticians, to mentor and guide the design of that software. Lastly, we engage organizations, implementers and health care team members from those areas that need our software to provide input into the design and the prioritization of features.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Database on the Environment System

Understanding the meaning of database is super easy and straightforward; it is a collection of connected data on some subjects. It comes in a computerized form, and you can retrieve the data at any hour of the day whenever needed. The information of database can easily extract in a computer. When it comes to comprehensive databases, things that include in it are wildlife database, forest cover database, and conservation database, etc. the databases are also available for some diseases which include malaria, fluorosis, HIV/AIDS

rely on equipment without ready knowledge about limitations, maintenance requirements, and problems with adaptation to their particular home settings.

The increased prominence of the use of technology in the health care arena poses predictable challenges for many lay users, especially people with low health literacy, cognitive impairment, or limited technology experience. For example, remote health care management may be more effective when it is supported by technology, and various electronic health care (“e-health”) applications have been developed for this purpose. With the spectrum of caregivers ranging from individuals caring for themselves or other family members to highly experienced professional caregivers, computer-based care management systems could offer varying levels of guidance, reminding, and alerting, depending on the sophistication of the operator and the criticality of the message. However, if these technologies or applications are difficult to understand or use, they may be ignored or misused, with potentially deleterious effects on care recipient health and safety. Applying existing accessibility and usability guidelines and employing user-centered design and validation methods in the development of health technology products designed for use in the home would help ensure that they are safe and effective for their targeted user populations. In this effort, it is important to recognize how the line between medical devices and health information technologies has become blurred while regulatory oversight has remained distinct, and it is not always clear into which domain a product falls.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper


The term global warming refers to an unnatural and accelerated increase in temperature. These increases are mostly due to the release of heat trapping gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, halocarbons, and
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To create fear, the campaign charges that limiting carbon emissions would be exorbitantly expensive...To sow doubt, the fossil fuel industries take alleged “uncertainties” in climate science out of context, blow them up out of proportion, and use them to stir up skepticism.(60)

These oil companies quietly fund groups that sound like environmental organizations but are actually used to further their cause. They also pay scientists to try and fool the public. One example is Dr. S. Fred Singer who has received somewhere around 165,000 dollars from companies including Exxon, Shell, UNOCAL, ARCO, and Sun Oil (Berger 62). Unfortunately there is a long list of organizations, publications, think tanks, and even so called scientists that are funded by the oil companies in an attempt to misinform and even endanger the public because of their own self-interest. These are the people telling us that global warming is not harmful, is not a problem, is not even real. But scientist who have been studying diseases like malaria, cholera, and dengue fever know differently. Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

These hazards can impact health and safety. Maintaining healthy homes and communities is essential to environmental health.

Infrastructure and Surveillance
Preventing exposure to environmental hazards relies on many partners, including state and local health departments. Personnel, surveillance systems, and education are important resources for investigating and responding to disease, monitoring for hazards, and educating the public. Additional methods and greater capacity to measure and respond to environmental hazards are needed.

Global Environmental Health
Water quality is an important global challenge. Diseases can be reduced by improving water quality and sanitation and increasing access to adequate water and sanitation facilities.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Emerging Issues in Environmental Health

Environmental health is a dynamic and evolving field. While not all complex environmental issues can be predicted, some known emerging issues in the field include:

Climate Change
Climate change is projected to impact sea level, patterns of infectious disease, air quality, and the severity of natural disasters such as floods, droughts, and storms.3, 4

Disaster Preparedness
Preparedness for the environmental impact of natural disasters as well as disasters of human origin includes planning for human health needs and the impact on public infrastructure, such as water and roadways.5

Nanotechnology
The potential impact of nanotechnology is significant and offers possible improvements to:

  • Disease prevention, detection, and treatment
  • Electronics
  • Clean energy
  • Manufacturing
  • Environmental risk assessment Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

However, nanotechnology may also present unintended health risks or changes to the environment.6

The Built Environment
Features of the built environment appear to impact human health—influencing behaviors, physical activity patterns, social networks, and access to resources.7

Exposure to Unknown Hazards
Every year, hundreds of new chemicals are introduced to the U.S. market. It is presumed that some of these chemicals may present new, unexpected challenges to human health, and their safety should be evaluated prior to release.

These cross-cutting issues are not yet understood well enough to inform the development of systems for measuring and tracking their impact. Further exploration is warranted. The environmental health landscape will continue to evolve and may present opportunities for additional research, analysis, and monitoring.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Quantifying the impacts of environmental degradation on human health is essential for the development of well-informed policies by the health sector and consequently many valuation studies have been conducted worldwide the past decades addressing environmental risks to public health. The main approaches for health impact valuations can be broadly classified into revealed and stated preference techniques. The first take into account observable market information which can be adjusted and used for revealing an individual’s valuation. Revealed preferences include cost of illness, human capital surveys, hedonic pricing and the Quality Adjusted Life Year studies. In stated preferences studies the market for the good is ‘constructed’ through the use of questionnaires. The two most-well-known stated preference methods are the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) and the Choice Experiments (CE).

Cost of illness studies measure the direct (medical costs, nursing care, drugs) and indirect (opportunity) economic costs associated with a disease and estimate the potential savings from the eradication of the disease. Human capital surveys estimate the productivity loss measured in workdays due to illness. This approach also values loss of life based on the foregone earnings associated with premature mortality. The notion is that people should be willing to pay at least as much as the value of the income they would lose by dying prematurely.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Damage costs estimates from environmental hazards for the economy as a whole are also obtained through general equilibrium macroeconomic modeling. These studies assess welfare impacts in a national or international level by examining all the sectors of the economy and estimating environmental health impacts on parameters of the economy like income and consumption.

The Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) studies measure both the quality and quantity of life. The values for a Life Year range from 0, implying death, to 1, implying a year of perfect health. Therefore, QALYs provide an indication of the benefits from a healthcare intervention in terms of health-related quality. Combined with the costs of providing different interventions, a cost-effectiveness analysis (cost per QALY) can follow to allow for comparisons of different interventions. A monetary value can also be placed on a QALY to estimate the dollar benefits of a health intervention or policy and allow for a subsequent cost-benefit analysis. Stated Willingness to Pay, elicited through a contingent valuation study or a discrete choice study, is often used, to monetize QALYs. Other methods to value a QALY include time-trade-offs, standard gamble and the visual analogue scale. Hedonic pricing methods assess differences in the price of housing in polluted or unpolluted areas, or the difference in wages between hazardous and non-hazardous jobs. Variations in housing prices and wages reflect the value of health damages avoided to those individuals and therefore reveal individual’s willingness to pay to avoid damages.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Stated preference approaches include the Contingent Valuation Method and Choice Experiments. The respective differences between the two methodologies relate to the way in which the economic values are elicited. In a contingent valuation questionnaire respondents are presented with a valuation scenario that describes the changes in the provision of the public good resulting from the policy under evaluation and, in the simplest open-ended format, are asked about their maximum Willingness to Pay for the policy to be implemented. Grounded on Lancaster’s theory of value [11], choice experiments describe the good under evaluation in terms of its characteristics, attributes, and the levels these attributes take. One of the attributes is usually price, so that the marginal value of the other attributes can be evaluated in monetary terms. Accordingly, respondents are presented with a set of alternatives constructed from different combinations of the levels of attributes, and are asked to choose their most preferred. Similarly a choice experiment can be used to examine policy implications of a policy or management strategy with policy impacts being the attributes to be valued.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Before valuing the health damage the establishment of a dose-response function relating pollutant concentrations to health impacts is required [12]. The impacts of environmental degradation on mortality, expressed as the increase in the probability of premature death, and quality of life, expressed as reduction of the morbidity risk, are thus initially considered. Accordingly respondents are asked to either state their willingness to pay for a prevention scenario (stated preference approach) or the benefits are elicited through the costs that would be saved if the risk was eradicated (cost of illness studies). Benefits are mainly reported by calculating the Value of a Statistical Life (For a review of the literature calculating the value of a statistical life based on labor and housing market data see Viscusi and Aldy [13].). The Value of Statistical Life (VSL) is calculated by dividing the value of a small risk change by the actual change in risk and thus captures the effect of small changes in the risk of premature death for a large population of potentially exposed people [14].Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Since primary data collection to establish the dose response functions or proceed with the valuations can be expensive and time-demanding, there is substantial policy interest in using benefit transfer techniques. In this context, original values from existing studies are transferred to policy sites after correcting for certain parameters. Given the number of valuation studies, several meta-analyses studies have been recently conducted. Following this approach valuation estimates from existing studies are collected and the determinants of these estimates are examined. In a meta-analysis regression, therefore, the dependent variable is a common summary statistic, such as a predicted variable for the Willingness to Pay, whereas the independent variables include characteristics of the primary data, study design, valuation method, sample size, model specification, econometric methods, date of publication [15]. Meta-analyses can feedback the establishment of value transfer functions to estimate values for policy sites of interest based on properly adjusted information from existing studies on similar sites, study sites [16].Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Each of the methods described has its own strengths and limitations. The choice between these methods should be case-study driven, that is, it should be a function of case-study-specific data availability and socio-economic-political framework. In human capital surveys it is often difficult to assign wages for housework or non-cash labour. Hedonic methods require a well functioning market for housing or labour, which internalizes the health risks associated with a location or a job. The cost of illness approach fails to capture the full damage of illness, such as psychological suffering and physical pain and should be thus treated as a lower bound of the total value of health risks aversion [17]. Using QALY to estimate the damage costs may also lead to underestimations [18]. Opponents of QALYs use argue that these measures cannot in general appropriately represent individual preferences for health, while they are consistent with the utility theory under very restrictive conditions [19]. QALYs finally ignore the distributional effects arising from the dependence of WTP on income. Macroeconomic modelling is often based on simplistic assumption regarding the economy while many impacts are unquantifiable and are thus not modelled [5].Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

The contingent valuation method (CVM), although widely used, has been criticised for its lack of reliability since it is associated with biases, such as hypothetical bias, strategic bias, yes-saying bias and embedding effect [20,21]. Hypothetical bias contends that respondents may be prepared to reveal their true values but are not capable of knowing these values without participating in a market in the first place. Strategic bias occurs when respondents deliberately under- or overstate their WTP. Respondents may understate their WTP if they believe that the actual fees they will pay for provision of the environmental resources will be influenced by their response to the CV question. Conversely, realising that payments expressed in a CV exercise are purely hypothetical, respondents may overstate their true WTP in the hope that this may increase the likelihood of a policy being accepted. Yea-saying bias indicates that respondents may express a positive WTP because they feel good about the act of giving for a social good although they believe that the good itself is unimportant while embedding bias implies that WTP is not affected by the scale of the good being offered. To address these, the Blue Ribbon Panel under the auspices of NOAA [22] has made recommendations regarding best practice guidelines for the design and implementation of contingent valuation studies.Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

Comparing the stated preference methods for environmental valuation Boxall et al. [23] argue that choice experiments (CEs) have important advantages over others valuation methods mainly because of their experimental nature which enables the representation of different states of the environment using attributes and levels of specific choice situations. The latter has a clear benefit compared to other valuation methods as it leads respondents to explicitly make trade-offs between the various attributes of the situation and thus provides policy-makers with valuable information about public preferences for many states of the environment. Environmental health effects of a policy or project can therefore be explicitly addressed and valued. Both CVM and CEs studies represent preferences that are consistent with utility theory, with CEs being also able to solve for some of the biases present in the CVM. Therefore it is our opinion that the application of CEs should be further enhanced in health economics to evaluate health impacts of environmental policies. Emerging Areas Of Human Health Essay Assignment Paper

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