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3 Health Goals and Indicators for Sustainable Development
Pages 23-50

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From page 23...
... As a short-term target, the webinar series is intended to inform the current United Nations (UN) development agenda process, which is setting the stage for new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
From page 24...
... Top-down approaches to improving public health have worked effectively for a wide range of issues, which is why the MDGs and other inspirational goals mainly take this kind of approach. However, these approaches are unlikely to be sufficient to address the challenges presented by global environmental change and the need to achieve sustainable development goals; working with other sectors to address current and future challenges will be critical.
From page 25...
... One contributor may be climate change. Research looking at how climate change may affect current crop production, particularly the cereal crops, shows that observed increased temperature changes from 1980 to 2008 are associated with decreased crop yields in many of the places having difficulty achieving Target 1C (Lobell and Field, 2007)
From page 26...
... 26 FIGURE 3-1 World Mapper view of the world scaled in terms of underweight children. SOURCE: Worldmapper, 2006.
From page 27...
... FIGURE 3-2 Progress toward MDG 1: Hunger target. NOTE: The calculation of progress compares countrylevel information on the prevalence of undernourishment (2005–2007)
From page 28...
... As shown in Figure 3-3, climate change will greatly increase the risk of diarrheal disease based on temperature projections alone, with new regions becoming susceptible and currently susceptible regions seeing increased diarrheal disease rates (Kolstad and Johansson, 2011)
From page 29...
... Reprinted with permission from Environmental Health Perspectives. Ebi stated that the health risks of climate change arise from the interactions of three factors: (1)
From page 30...
... JOINING HEALTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS THROUGH LOW-CARBON POLICIES Sir Andrew Haines, M.D. Professor of Public Health and Primary Care, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Andrew Haines began by stating that his talk would focus on the importance of bringing together health and sustainable development using the example of strategies that both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve health.
From page 31...
... FIGURE 3-4 Fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions compared to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) marker scenarios used for climate projections.
From page 32...
... The studies consider different strategies in the four sectors and look at both greenhouse gas emissions and human health implications of the strategy in question compared with a business-as-usual strategy without specific policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the case of the United Kingdom, the Climate Change Act set a target for at least an 80 percent reduction of 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
From page 33...
... Urban Transport Sector The second sector Haines outlined was urban transport. He noted that this sector is responsible for a large and growing amount of greenhouse gas emissions in many countries and impacts air pollution, road traffic injuries, and, very importantly, sedentary lifestyles.
From page 34...
... . Haines noted that although it is important to improve the efficiency of energy use in the agriculture and food sector, this alone will not be sufficient to achieve the kind of targets needed to adequately reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to stabilize the climate.
From page 35...
... are not shown in the figure, but they would clearly be at the bottom-left corner, below gas and close to nuclear, because many renewable technologies do not produce fineparticulate air pollution, which is the major risk factor from the combustion of coal and lignite. Haines highlighted that there is a range of new technologies coming to the market (including renewable technologies for clean energy)
From page 36...
... In the current study, 291 diseases and injuries and 67 risk factors are evaluated at the country level over time. Murray noted that looking at change in health over time will likely be essential when thinking about some of the issues that will be 2 The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 was published as seven separate articles in The Lancet in December 2012.
From page 37...
... Murray explained that measures of DALYs -- a measure of healthy years of life lost that captures both premature mortality and illness -- have shifted away from burden in children (although many children are still affected) toward burden in young and middle-aged adults.
From page 38...
... 38 FIGURE 3-6 Ranks with 95 percent uncertainty intervals for the top 25 causes of global disability-adjusted life years in 1990 and 2010, and the percent change with 95 percent uncertainty intervals between 1990 and 2010. SOURCE: Murray et al., 2012.
From page 39...
... Murray highlighted that road injuries have seen about a 34 percent increase in the burden of disease over this period of time, and this may be important for transport agendas. When looking at the global burden of disease attributable to different risk factors, high blood pressure is at the top of the list in terms of contributing to the percent of DALYs, followed by tobacco smoking and alcohol use (Lim et al., 2012)
From page 40...
... In addition, changes can achieve both greenhouse gas reduction goals and health goals. Murray explained that a likely indictor could be the fraction of miles traveled using clean and safe transport, which is complicated to calculate but not impossible.
From page 41...
... At the same time, there is some resistance in the health sector to such a measure because it is perceived to not focus enough on medical care and public health and because other sectors have so much impact on healthy life expectancy. The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 measures healthy life expectancy by country from 1990 to 2010.
From page 42...
... growth, highlighting that in his opinion GDP is a flawed indicator of the economic success of different human societies. Haines stated that there is a need to look more broadly at other metrics of human development, whether well-being or healthy life expectancy, as Murray suggested.
From page 43...
... Water and Sanitation Indicator Ana Treasure, environmental health advisor at the Pan American Health Organization representation in Jamaica, directed a question to Murray about his thoughts on possible indicators for water and sanitation given the updated information from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. Murray noted that water and sanitation remains an important agenda item, particularly for parts of West Africa and other places where waterborne diseases remain prevalent.
From page 44...
... Healthy Life Expectancy Indicator Balbus asked Murray to elaborate on the healthy life expectancy indicator and provide further information on the metrics available at the country and subnational levels. Murray noted that there are two fundamental strategies for measuring healthy life expectancy, in which a mortality measurement and life table is combined with a measure of the prevalence of ill health and disability.
From page 45...
... Because the clean and safe transport indicator is a new idea, it would require mapping out a new measurement strategy that combines the cleanliness and safety with consumer choice or behavior data. Murray noted that this could be managed by enhancing data about personal behaviors and transport use with measures of how clean and safe those choices are at the local level.
From page 46...
... 2012. Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation.
From page 47...
... 2012. A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010.
From page 48...
... for 291 diseases and injuries in 21 regions, 1990–2010: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. The Lancet 380(9859)
From page 49...
... 2009. Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: Urban land transport.


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