In September 2011, a high-level UN meeting brought together leaders from across the globe to discuss the prevention and control of chronic diseases. This meeting acknowledged that the global burden of preventable health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes was so immense that if uncurbed, it will cripple global health systems and undermine social and economic development
When I was invited to contribute a chapter to a new book about climate change I found myself with a problem: how does one, in just a few thousand words, even begin to cover a subject of such scale and complexity? From which a myriad possible angles should the issue be approached? After all, I am not a scientist, nor am I an economist, a lawyer, a policy-maker, an engineer or a scholar
The term ‘water crisis’ has entered the public lexicon of Australian society. A sense of impending water scarcity has been given critical urgency through growing recognition of climatic change in the amount, location and variability of rainfall due to anthropogenic warming of the atmosphere
Recognising the failure to meet the needs of the world’s poor, the United Nations General Assembly, on 8 September 2000, unanimously adopted the Millennium Declaration. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which followed the Declaration, are the world’s most broadly supported and comprehensive development targets — creating numerical benchmarks for tackling poverty and hunger, ill health, gender inequality, lack of education, lack of access to clean water, and environmental degradation by 2015
The challenge of assuring global food security for the world’s increasing population — estimated to reach 9 billion by 2050 — has been much discussed. Many solutions have been proffered, but most are from limited perspectives and often represent vested interests of some sort — economic, political, or academic
Print media is dying — at least, that’s the conventional wisdom. Circulation figures show sales of major Australian newspapers have been in consistent decline. And that’s a worldwide trend. In its State of the News Media 2015 report the Pew Research Center said: ‘Newspapers continue to struggle as an industry.’ In the United States, newspaper advertising revenue is less than half what it was a decade ago and daily circulation is down 19 per cent over that same period
Our world in the second decade of the 21st century is characterised by extensive growth of the human population (7.2 billion humans in 2014, with one billion extra expected in the next 12 years), and a parallel increase in the use of fossil fuels such as crude oil, natural gas and coal. These present trends cannot continue without resulting in grave implications affecting the global quality of life. Numerous speculations exist regarding future scenarios
Depression has been judged by experts to be as debilitating to the individual as multiple sclerosis. It is responsible for more disability in Australia than any other medical condition and has been estimated to cost Australian workplaces over 6 billion dollars annually
As the NCDs rain down, or even pour, and the forecast is for torrential rain, we can bask in the success of tobacco control in places like Australia. Unlike when I grew up, my children, and yours can dance without having to choke on tobacco smoke. So, tobacco control in Australia is a story about dancing in the rain! Rates in Australia have relentlessly decreased to an all-time low of less than 13%
In 1981 a young political junkie with progressive sympathies, Joe Trippi, joined the campaign to make Tom Bradley governor of California, and so the first black governor in US history. An alumnus of San Jose University,Trippi had taken in the ‘vibe’ of the incipient Silicon Valley. He suggested using a computer to help track voters and manage the campaign