Asthma is a common long-term inflammatory disease of the airways of the lungs. Asthma occurs when allergens, pollen, dust, or other particles, are inhaled into the lungs, causing the bronchioles to constrict and produce mucus, which then restricts oxygen flow to the alveoli. It is characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and easily triggered bronchospasms. Symptoms include episodes of wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath. These may occur a few times a day or a few times per week. Depending on the person, asthma symptoms may become worse at night or with exercise.
A health system, health care system or healthcare system is an organization of people, institutions, and resources that delivers health care services to meet the health needs of target populations.
Health has a variety of definitions, which have been used for different purposes over time. In general, it refers to physical and emotional well-being, especially that associated with normal functioning of the human body, absent of disease, pain, or injury.
Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EARTHDAY.ORG including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international advocacy non-governmental organization and think tank, based in Cologny, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer Klaus Schwab.
The United States Public Health Service is a collection of agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services concerned with public health, containing nine out of the department's twelve operating divisions. The Assistant Secretary for Health oversees the PHS. The Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (PHSCC) is the federal uniformed service of the PHS, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States.
Health care, or healthcare, is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health professionals and allied health fields. Medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, midwifery, nursing, optometry, audiology, psychology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, athletic training, and other health professions all constitute health care. The term includes work done in providing primary care, secondary care, tertiary care, and public health.
WE ACT for Environmental Justice is a nonprofit environmental justice organization based in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City. The organization was founded in March 1988 to mobilize community opposition to the city's operation of the North River Sewage Treatment Plant, and the siting of the sixth bus depot in Northern Manhattan.
Air pollution is the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the environment. Air pollution can be chemical, physical or biological. There are many different types of air pollutants, such as gases, particulates, lead and biological molecules. Air pollution can cause diseases, allergies, and even death; it can also cause harm to animals and crops and damage the natural environment or built environment. Air pollution can occur naturally or be caused by human activities.
The Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) is a medical guidelines organisation which works with public health officials and health care professionals globally to reduce asthma prevalence, morbidity, and mortality. GINA was launched in 1993 as a collaboration between National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, and the World Health Organization.
Obstructive lung disease is a category of respiratory disease characterized by airway obstruction. Many obstructive diseases of the lung result from narrowing (obstruction) of the smaller bronchi and larger bronchioles, often because of excessive contraction of the smooth muscle itself. It is generally characterized by inflamed and easily collapsible airways, obstruction to airflow, problems exhaling, and frequent medical clinic visits and hospitalizations. Types of obstructive lung disease include asthma, bronchiectasis, bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Although COPD shares similar characteristics with all other obstructive lung diseases, such as the signs of coughing and wheezing, they are distinct conditions in terms of disease onset, frequency of symptoms, and reversibility of airway obstruction. Cystic fibrosis is also sometimes included in obstructive pulmonary disease.
Health in Indonesia is affected by a number of factors. Indonesia has over 26,000 health care facilities; 2,000 hospitals, 9,000 community health centres and private clinics, 1,100 dentist clinics and 1,000 opticians. The country lacks doctors with only 0.4 doctors per 1,000 population. In 2018, Indonesia's healthcare spending was US$38.3 billion, 4.18% of their GDP, and is expected to rise to US$51 billion in 2020.
Francis Sellers Collins is an American physician-scientist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He served as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, from 17 August 2009 to 19 December 2021, serving under three presidents.
The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI), also known as Baby Friendly Initiative (BFI), is a worldwide programme of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), launched in 1992 in India following the adoption of the Innocenti Declaration on breastfeeding promotion in 1990. The initiative is a global effort for improving the role of maternity services to enable mothers to breastfeed babies for the best start in life. It aims at improving the care of pregnant women, mothers and newborns at health facilities that provide maternity services for protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding, in accordance with the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes.
One Health is an approach calling for "the collaborative efforts of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally, to attain optimal health for people, animals and our environment", as defined by the One Health Initiative Task Force (OHITF). It developed in response to evidence of the spreading of zoonotic diseases between species and increasing awareness of "the interdependence of human and animal health and ecological change". In this viewpoint, public health is no longer seen in purely human terms. Due to a shared environment and highly conserved physiology, animals and humans not only suffer from the same zoonotic diseases but can also be treated by either structurally related or identical drugs. For this reason, special care must be taken to avoid unnecessary or over-treatment of zoonotic diseases, particularly in the context of drug resistance in infectious microbes.
Agnes Binagwaho is a Rwandan Politician, pediatrician, co-founder and the former vice chancellor of the University of Global Health Equity (2017-2022). In 1996, she returned to Rwanda where she provided clinical care in the public sector as well as held many positions including the position of Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Health of Rwanda from October 2008 until May 2011 and Minister of Health from May 2011 until July 2016. She has been a professor of global health delivery practice since 2016 and a professor of pediatrics since 2017 at the University of Global Health Equity. She has served the health sector in various high-level government positions. She resides in Kigali.
Kari C. Nadeau is the Chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health and John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies. She is also adjunct professor at Stanford University in the Department of Pediatrics. She practices Allergy, Asthma, Immunology in children and adults as a physician, and has published over 400 papers. Her team focuses on quantifying health outcomes of solutions as they pertain to air pollution mitigation and adaptation at the local, regional, country, and global levels. Dr. Nadeau, with a team of individuals and patients and families, has been able to help major progress and impact in the clinical fields of exposomics, immunology, infection, asthma, and allergy. Dr. Nadeau is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the WHO Air Pollution and Health Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) and the U.S. EPA Children’s Health Protection Committee.
Esteban González Burchard is an American physician-scientist, a UCSF Distinguished, Endowed, Tenured Professor of Pharmacy and Medicine, Pulmonary & Critical Care Physician-Scientist trained in Genetics, Immunology, Epidemiology, Pharmacogenetics, and clinical phase 1 trials. A specialist in gene-environment interactions in asthma and health disparities.
Children are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than adults. The World Health Organization estimated that 88% of the existing global burden of disease caused by climate change affects children under five years of age. A Lancet review on health and climate change lists children as the worst-affected category by climate change. Children under 14 are 44 percent more likely to die from environmental factors, and those in urban areas are disproportionately impacted by lower air quality and overcrowding.
Tara A. Schwetz is an American biophysicist and government administrator who serves as a deputy director of the National Institutes of Health. She previously served as Acting Principal Deputy Director.
