King's College London: Post-doc on capabilities approach and health ethics

More information at:  7 July 2014 Deadline.  http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/pertra/vacancy/external/apply.php?id=16844658 

Vacancy Details

Job title	Division	Job ref	Closing date
Research Associate	Social Science, Health & Medicine	WDAF164414JT	07/07/2014
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Summary	Applications are invited for a full-time 12 month Research Associate post to work on a project extending the capabilities approach to population level health ethics. The post holder will have a strong background in the capabilities approach and health with an interest in measurement and application. The project further extends Sridhar Venkatapuram’s argument for a moral right to the capability to be healthy laid out in Health Justice to population level issues. The post holder will carry out philosophical research in one or more of the project’s four research areas including social responsibility for health capabilities and health equity, personal responsibility for health, health capability measurement versus alternatives, and aggregation issues related to promoting health capabilities.
Detail	The post holder will be based at the Department of Social Science, Health & Medicine at King’s College London (Strand Campus) and supervised by the PI on the project, Dr. Sridhar Venkatapuram. She/He will be responsible for examining issues at the frontier of capabilities theory leading to single or co-authored publications and dissemination of outputs. She/He will also have opportunities to teach on the pioneering MSc in Global Health and Social Justice offered in the department. The post holder will be encouraged to become part of the thriving community of philosophers at King’s and in London involved in pushing forward global justice and health ethics debates. The successful applicant will have demonstrable expertise in the capabilities approach with evidence of ability to undertake substantive applied philosophical research that will contribute to the aims of the project. Experience with health measurement, social statistics, economic cost-benefit analysis or related quantitative disciplines would be advantageous. Equality of opportunity is College policy. The appointment will be made, dependent on relevant qualifications, within the Grade 6 scale, currently £31,644 to £37,756, per annum plus £2,323 per annum London Allowance. This is a fixed term contract for 35 hours/week for 12 months. For an informal discussion of the post please contact Dr. Sridhar Venkatapuram at +44 (0)20 7848 1862 or via email at Sridhar.venkatapuram@kcl.ac.uk
Salary	£33,967 - £40,079
Post duration	12 months

Global Report on health and access to care by minorities and indigenous people

Find the original website here.

Minorities and indigenous peoples suffer more ill-health and poorer quality of care, new global report launched as UN meets to follow up on MDGs

25 September 2013

Minorities and indigenous peoples suffer more ill-health and receive poorer quality of care, says an international rights organization in a new global report.

Minority Rights Group International's (MRG) flagship report, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2013, presents a global picture of the health inequalities experienced by minorities and indigenous communities.

The report is launched to coincide with a United Nations General Assembly meeting to follow up on efforts made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and says that ill-health and poor healthcare are often consequences of discrimination.

‘Indigenous peoples and minorities are often marginalized in all aspects of life, such as access to water and sanitation, education and employment. But the marginalization and inequalities experienced by these groups in relation to health outcomes are particularly stark,' says Carl Soderbergh, MRG's Director of Policy and Communications.

‘MRG believes that everyone - regardless of their ethnic, religious, linguistic or cultural background - should have the right to access appropriate care and to lead healthy lives. After all, the right to health is the most fundamental right - the right to survive,' he adds.

In Africa, Asia and the Americas the report says that the maternal mortality rate - a key area of concern for the MDGs - is generally much higher among indigenous and minority communities, particularly those in remote areas.

For instance, in Pakistan, the maternal mortality ratio for Baluchistan - largely inhabited by the Baluch minority - stands at nearly three times the national average. Women and girls from marginalized communities in Kenya and across East Africa, who are subjected to harmful cultural practices such as female genital mutilation and early marriage, are at high risk from obstetric fistula, a hole in the birth canal caused by prolonged or obstructed pregnancy.

Other key MDGs include reducing child mortality and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

The report finds that in Guatemala, indigenous children experience 20 per cent higher malnutrition than their Ladino counterparts, whilst in Europe Roma children have less access to vaccines and have higher infant mortality rates.

Meanwhile in Tanzania, national HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns were issued only in the dominant language of Swahili. Anti-retrovirals, although free, were not easily accessible in districts where pastoralists predominantly live.

The report makes key recommendations for ensuring that minorities and indigenous people have access to life-saving healthcare, such as the training of minority or indigenous staff and increased community involvement in local healthcare initiatives.

The UN General Assembly must take into consideration the perspectives of minorities and indigenous communities, the factors that they identify as priorities for delivery of healthcare, and the problems and structural barriers that exist, in the formulation of a new generation of development goals after 2015, says MRG.

A case study in the report shows that involving Adivasi women in the planning and evaluating of health care has significantly reduced deaths and empowered women among Adivasi communities in Jharkhand and Odisha. Over 84 million Adivasis (original inhabitants) from more than 500 tribal groups live in western, central, eastern and north-eastern India.

‘The report, with its focus on health inequalities, clearly shows that any post-MDGs framework is doomed to fail unless discrimination towards minorities and indigenous peoples is urgently addressed,' says Carl Soderbergh. ‘Critical to this is the involvement of community representatives in the UN discussions.'

According to UN estimates, there are some 370 million individuals belonging to indigenous peoples in the world, and a much greater number of persons belonging to ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities. Over 900 million people, or, some one in seven of the world's population, belong to groups that experience disadvantage as a result of their identity.

open access book: Health Systems, Health, Wealth and Societal Well-being

Health Systems, Health, Wealth and Societal Well-being
Assessing the case for investing in health systems

Edited by Josep Figueras and Martin McKee

Get the pdf of book here.

From the introduction:

This book looks at health systems from a new perspective. It argues that they
are not, as is often believed, simply a drag on resources but rather are part
and parcel of improving health and achieving better economic growth. The
relationship between health systems, health and wealth is complex, but the
three are inextricably linked so that investing cost-effectively in health systems
can contribute to the ultimate goal of societal well-being (Figueras et al. 2009;
McKee et al. 2009).

The policy debate on health systems has been dominated in recent decades
by concerns about sustainability and the system’s ability to fund itself in the
face of growing cost pressures. More recently, the economic crises that have
affl icted some countries have added to these concerns. Health expenditure in
many European countries has been growing at a faster rate than the economy,
accounting for an increasing percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) and
creating unease about the costs falling upon industry and thus its competitiveness
in an increasingly globalized economy. Containing costs has, consequently,
become a major priority for most health systems in the World Health
Organization (WHO) European Region and beyond. Typically, policy-makers
have sought to fi nd a balanced combination of different strategies acting on
both the supply and demand sides of health services (Box 1.1).

Disability in the Global South - Special Issue of TWQ

Third World Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 8, 01 Sep 2011 is now available online on Taylor & Francis Online.
This new issue contains the following articles:

Articles
Southern Bodies and Disability: re-thinking concepts
Raewyn Connell
Pages: 1369-1381
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.614799

Human Rights and the Global South: the case of disability
Helen Meekosha & Karen Soldatic
Pages: 1383-1397
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.614800

Embodiment and Emotion in Sierra Leone
Maria Berghs
Pages: 1399-1417
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.604515

Fostering Deaf People's Empowerment: the Cameroonian deaf community and epistemological equity
Goedele Am De Clerck
Pages: 1419-1435
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.604516

Care, Disability and HIV in Africa: diverging or interconnected concepts and practices?
Ruth Evans & Agnes Atim
Pages: 1437-1454
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.604517

Geodisability Knowledge Production and International Norms: a Sri Lankan case study
Fiona Kumari Campbell
Pages: 1455-1474
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.604518

The Lived Experience of Families Living with Spinal Cord Disability inNortheast Thailand
Julie A King & Mark J King
Pages: 1475-1491
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.614801

Disability and Poverty: the need for a more nuanced understanding of implications for development policy and practice
Nora Groce, Maria Kett, Raymond Lang & Jean-Francois Trani
Pages: 1493-1513
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.604520

Including Deaf Children in Primary Schools in Bushenyi, Uganda: a community-based initiative
Susie Miles, Lorraine Wapling & Julia Beart
Pages: 1515-1525
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.604523

Disability and Humanitarianism in Refugee Camps: the case for a travelling supranational disability praxis
Mansha Mirza
Pages: 1527-1536
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.604524

Review Article
Poverty and Disability in the Global South
Janaka Biyanwila
Pages: 1537-1540
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.604525

India Health "For the first time money is not an issue"

Progress in Medicine Conference Bristol April 2010

"Progress in Medicine"

Bristol, 13-15 April 2010

An interdisciplinary conference on the nature of progress in medicine, combining perspectives from philosophy, history, medical science, and clinical practice.

Conference homepage: events/progress_in_medicine/index.html>

Principal Speakers:

• Derek Bolton (KCL) - “Defining illness in psychiatry and in general medicine”
• Matthew Broome (Warwick) - "Medicine as applied physiology, psychiatry as applied neuroscience"
• Raffaella Campaner and Maria Carla Galavotti (Bologna) - "Evidence and the assessment of causal relations in the health sciences"
• K. Codell Carter (Brigham Young University) - “What progress are we now to expect in medicine?”
• Nancy Cartwright (LSE and UC San Diego) - "The long road from 'it works somewhere' to 'it will work for us'”
• Sir Iain Chalmers (UK Cochrane Centre) and Ulrich Tröhler (Bern) - “Medical historical textbooks and review articles fail to take account of progress in historical research”
• Andrew Cunningham (Cambridge) - "The origins of the concept of progress in medicine, ca. 16th and 17th centuries"
• Bill Fulford (Warwick) - "Neuroscience and values: from theory to practice in mental health"
• Sander Greenland (UC Los Angeles) - "How much progress in medicine is illusory?"
• Ilana Löwy (Inserm, CNRS, Paris-Sud 11) - Prenatal diagnosis: Does the improvement of diagnostic techniques constitute progress?"
• Mark Parascandola (U.S. National Institutes of Health) - "Epistemic
risk: Empirical science and the fear of being wrong"
• John Pickstone (Manchester) - tba
• David Wootton (York) - "Progress in science and medicine---some puzzles solved"
• Michael Worboys (Manchester) - "Chlamydia: A disease without a history"
• John Worrall (LSE) - "Evidence in medicine: getting back to the Hill top"

Full list of speakers and papers:

Registration now open: department/events/progress_in_medicine/registration.html>

Email: