Health & disease

Overview

The interaction of biological dynamics with rapid social and demographic change is creating new disease landscapes affecting both people and animals, with diverse implications for the poor.
New disease dynamics are affecting many developing countries, from short-term shocks associated with epidemic outbreaks of either well-established or new organisms, to long-term stresses exemplified by the unfolding impact of HIV/AIDS.

At the same time rapid scientific advances coupled with large international investments promise technological solutions to developing country health problems, through a greatly increased supply of existing drugs, vaccines and diagnostics and the development of new ones.

Globalisation and eroding trust

The effects of these global decisions depend on pathways shaped by both governance institutions and markets. Today these encompass a combination of highly globalised institutional arrangements and public-private partnerships such as the Global Fund, as well as local health delivery systems characterised by multiple knowledges and plural providers.

The rapid spread of media and information technologies have created many channels for health-related information of variable reliability, while it is difficult to generate trust in the context of rapid institutional and economic change.

The challenge

STEPS research will cover both human and animal health issues, aiming to meet the challenges of understanding the pathways through which dynamic and uncertain disease ecologies, social and technological change are interacting, and the implications for promoting and ensuring health for the poor.

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STEPS Working Paper 5: Health in a dynamic world

• Health in a Dynamic World (pdf 334kb)
  By Gerald Bloom, Jerker Edstrom, Melissa Leach, Henry Lucas, Hayley MacGregor, Hilary Standing, Linda Waldman
  

The world has faced a number of health major health challenges over the past few decades - HIV, pulltion, chronic illness, SARS. We need national and global health systems that take into account complex interactions between ecology, technology and social organisation.

• Download this paper (pdf 344kb)
• Order a copy of paper from the IDS bookshop, cost £5.00 per paper or order the set of seven STEPS titles for £20.00
• Read a summary of this paper

This work is licenced under a
Creative Commons Licence.

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Research Projects: cutting across domains & themes

• Crop, disease and innovation in Africa - focussing on dryland Kenya, maize and farming system dynamics in areas affected by climate change.
• Urbanisation in Asia - urbanisation and sustainability in Asia's growing cities, on the expanding peri-urban fringe of a major city, indicative of conditions for an increasing proportion of global poor.
• Rethinking regulation -addressing the gap between current assumptions about regulation in the cases of drugs, seeds and water in China and Latin America, and more complex realities.
• Risk, uncertainty and technology - how different institutions and groups frame and respond to risks and uncertainties in areas of rapid scientific and technological advance.
• Epidemics, livelihoods and politics - HIV-AIDS, SARS, avian flu, BSE - procedures for addressing epidemics that support rather than compromise poor people and support social justice.

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Related research & events

• Future Health Systems at the Geneva Health Forum
• Reframing Resilience The STEPS Centre's theme in 2008 is resilience; engaging with resilience thinking and exploring practical implications for policy in agriculture, water, peri-urban dynamics, epidemics and regulation.
• Listen to the World Health Day podcast
  David Peters, director of Future Health Systems and STEPS members Gerry Bloom share their thoughts on the theme World health day theme of international health security.
• From London to South Africa: Asbestos workers failed by science and the law. Research by STEPS member Linda Waldman

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Affliated projects

Find out more about our affiliated projects

Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Indonesia, China, Nepal and trials in Africa.
A participatory approach to encourage communities to carry out their own appraisal and analysis of community sanitation.

Future Health Systems China, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Uganda, the UK and the US. Strategies for improving access to appropriate health services by the poor in contexts of rapid institutional, economic and demographic change.

Development and HIV at the Institute of Development Studies
A new programme on Development and HIV at IDS, focusing on questions of the dynamic inter-action of resilience and vulnerability between individual biological and gendered human beings and in inter-relation to the virus itself. Contact: Jerker Edstrom

Realising Rights Bangladesh, Kenya, Ghana, the UK and the US. Addressing the factors underlying the low priority given to sexual and reproductive heath and rights in policy and practice.

POVILL China, Cambodia, Laos, Belgium, Sweden and the UK. Policies to help households cope with major illness

Veterinary Science, Transboundary Animal Diseases and Markets
Southern Africa – Botswana, Nambia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Exploring the economic, social and political trade-offs arising from foot and mouth disease control strategies.

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