What is Brush DJ?

Brush DJ is a free toothbrush timer app that plays 2 minutes of music taken at random from the user's device to encourage brushing for an effective length of time. The app also allows users to set reminders to brush twice a day, floss, use a mouthrinse and when next to see their dentist or hygienist. Evidence-based age specific information is given as per the Department of Health's toolkit 'Delivering Better Oral Health'.

 

 

 

Want to know more? Then visit www.BrushDJ.com

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EHFG 2012: New EHFG President Helmut Brand calling for expansion of EU health mandate

According to Prof Dr Helmut Brand, the new EHFG president, EU actions have contributed much more effectively to health protection in the everyday lives of EU citizens than national policymakers could have. He called for the further development of the EU health mandate established in the Maastricht Agreements, noting that the European Parliament should be given more power to deal with public health topics and the EU should be positioned more strongly in global health issues.

Prof Dr Helmut Brand (Chair of the Department of International Health at the University of Maastricht) is the new EHFG president. He made the following comments on assuming office: “There will be no revolution; I rely on evolution when it comes to the continuation of the EHFG, the most important EU congress on health policy issues. The Gasteiner Valley as venue, the format of the congress in general, the integration of the four “pillars” of policy, research, industry and civil society–all these aspects have been well received and should be retained.”

The EHFG should also retain a perspective that extends beyond the EU borders. The EHFG has networked for many years with the Southeast European Health Network (SEEHN), conducted a health policy dialog with the CIS countries and developed a mature cooperation arrangement with Taiwan. Touching on this latter collaborative effort, Professor Brand said: “It is a tradition that should be expanded in the medium term into a European-Asian dialogue. It has also become much more important to view European health issues also in a global context and to push for global networking.”

 

A “Workshop on the Future” and interim activities also between the annual congresses will supplement the previous EHFG program in future. Prof Brand: “The first event of this kind will be held in May 2013 at the University of Maastricht and will commemorate the Maastricht Agreement that was signed there in 1992 and that went into force in 1993. This agreement defined a health mandate for the EU for the first time. The object was to support and coordinate national health policymakers.”

 

Very positive contribution of EU actions thus far

Prof Brand noted that EU activities have contributed very positively to various aspects of health protection in the everyday life of EU citizens, e.g. food safety, the protection of non-smokers, or product safety, for example, toys. Patients benefit from EU measures to improve the safety of drugs and medicinal products, from advances in controlling infectious diseases or from the safety of blood and blood products. Prof Brand: “These EU-wide efforts frequently improved the health protection of more than 500 million citizens. That never would have been possible with individual actions by single countries.”

 

BSE, SARS and other public health crises have occasioned changes in the responsibility of the EU. In international crises, the national authorities were often convinced to share their responsibility because of their own insufficient ability to respond and the declining trust consumers showed in them. Prof Brand: “The EU worked out concepts for this type of joint responsibility not only to lay the legal groundwork but also to establish suitable infrastructures. Examples include networks, scientific advisory committees, agencies or data recording systems that contribute to better health protection for citizens and consumers.” Areas affected by these efforts were blood safety, food safety, monitoring of communicable diseases and cancer prevention or screening programs.

 

EU health mandate must be redefined

Prof Brand: “The EU health mandate has to be redefined for two reasons: first, because the challenges for public health and for health systems have changed dramatically since Maastricht but second, because of the current discussions on a further development of the architecture of Europe per se—for example developing the vision of the United States of Europe.” He went on to cite several central points crucial to further development:

- Further strengthen the European Parliament to give the public health sector another contact partner at institutional level.
- Position the EU even more strongly in global health issues as a major player on the global stage.
- Build up a European health information system to make data on health indicators broadly and speedily available.

 

Stability in a globalised world

“The subject of health is given much too little attention in the discussion of the financial and economic crisis. But it could offer a window of opportunity at European and at national level to implement reforms that would otherwise not be possible without the crisis, including a reform of the EU health mandate,” Prof Brand explained. He then added: “The public health sector must take an admonishing role in monitoring the solution strategies being developed to deal with the financial and economic crisis.”

 

The EHFG is the most important conference on health care policy in the European Union. In this its 15th year, the EHFG attracts more than 600 decision-makers from 45 countries to discuss major topics on the future of the European health care system from 3 to 6 October 2012.

Working with Communities to Strengthen Their Resilience

This year’s food crisis in the Sahel, a thin strip of land below the Sahara, marks the third time this decade that the region has suffered a food shortage. Chad and Niger, the two countries that traditionally have food shortages, were joined this year by Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Gambia, Cameroon and northern Nigeria. According to Save the Children and OxFam, over 18 million people in the Sahel are affected by hunger, and upwards of one million children are at risk of severe malnutrition.

The shortage did not come as a surprise; forecasting technology allows aid organizations to predict and plan for famines in advance. Therefore, the fact that famines happened in both 2005 and 2010 is rightfully frustrating to aid organizations, and leaves them wondering what can be done to better prevent or mitigate the cyclical food crises in the Sahel.

Map of countries and their food vulnerability

It is out of this frustration that aid agencies are recognizing the need to provide humanitarian aid with the intent of helping the long-term prospects of a community or state. The idea that programming should help people overcome shocks is referred to as resilience.

Resilience programming has been recognized as a step towards helping communities reduce their vulnerabilities so that when a major shock, such as a food crisis, political upheaval, or natural disaster occurs, there is less of an impact on the community. Or, if there is an impact, the community is able to return to their baseline level more quickly than without the aid programs. For example, negative coping skills, such as selling assets, would be less prevalent in a family that is resilient versus a family that is not. Moreover, systems should be resilient, meaning that a health center’s resources and staff should not be debilitated during a crisis. A resilient health center would be prepared for an increased patient load by training staff or having a supply chain that can react quickly to fluctuations in times of crisis.

As an intern at UNICEF’s West/Central Africa Regional Office this summer, I helped UNICEF gather information and plan for resilience-focused programs. Because the level of resilience of a community is determined by a number of factors, UNICEF is approaching resilience by looking at how their sectors are interacting and the best way to link their humanitarian aid with their development work.

In order to support this goal, I met with Section heads to gather information about how they see resilience fitting into their programs. I spoke with Country Offices to find out what they knew about the concept and whether or not the office had begun considering resilience as a framework when planning programs. I met with other UN agencies in order to learn about the coordinated approach to resilience, and met with other organizations to find out about their work. I helped create two monitoring tools to assess the progress towards implementation of resilience programming. Most important, I identified programming that was already promoting resilience, and identified areas where resilience-based programming could be increased in the Sahel.

Measuring the impact of resilience programming is difficult since so many factors can influence a person or community’s level of resilience, but I hope some operational research will take place to assess the impact of resilience programming. Research in both Palestine and Kenya by Alinovi et al. provides a comprehensive look at how to measure resilience to specific shocks. Columbia’s Sandro Galea used census data in the Gulf region to measure expected levels of resilience in communities impacted by Katrina.

Although the Sahel faces many challenges, I am hopeful about the future of the region. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, I saw the daily challenges the population faces, but also saw populations that had inherent safety networks that provided resilience. Therefore, I believe that the combination of the natural evolution of existing safety nets coupled with smarter, more strategic aid from the international community will result in disasters that are less debilitating to communities in the Sahel.

Abigail Greenleaf
MPH Candidate, Mailman School of Public Health

Food Reward Fridays

Each Friday, I'm going to post a picture of a modern food so ridiculous it makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time.  I'm doing this for two reasons:

1. To raise awareness about the unhealthy, fattening foods that are taking over global food culture.  These are highly rewarding, highly palatable, energy-dense foods that drive people to eat in the absence of hunger, and continue eating beyond calorie needs.  In many cases, the foods have been specifically designed to maximize "craveability" and palatability.
2. Because it's funny.

Without further ado... the first lucky winner:

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