The ultimate population health "Upstream" issue?

Click the Abstract images to enlarge for reading. The JAMA Network Reader doesn't permit screen-scraping of text. Below, from another of my blogs, Some photos of mine.

See also my post "The Next Anasazi ruin?" 

From the NY Daily News:

Effects of climate change could worsen public health: study
Extreme heat can exacerbate heart problems, respiratory issues and other health conditions. New York, get ready for three times as many hot days by 2050.

Climate change isn't just worrisome for the Earth.

It could also be a problem for your health, according to a new 20-year study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers from the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison looked at 56 medical journal articles about climate change's impact on health, plus air temperature information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center.

They found that numerous cities in the U.S. will have many more days of high-heat temperatures by 2050. Urban areas like New York City can expect those days to triple.

And the health implications of those extreme temperatures are scary: worsening of respiratory disorders, heart conditions, infectious diseases, reduced food availability and mental health disorders such as depression and PTSD that result after natural disasters.

Reducing climate change could thus possibly reduce our nation's health problems. In a related editorial, JAMA editor in chief Dr. Howard Bauchner and executive editor Dr. Phil B. Fontanarosa wrote that it is just as threatening to our public health as "lack of sanitation, clean water, and pollution (were) in the 20th century."

"Understanding and characterizing this threat and educating the medical community, public, and policy makers are crucial if the health of the world's population is to continue to improve during the latter half of the 21st century," they said.

Yeah, but at least the North Slope Point Barrow Pino Noir should be excellent. /s

apropos, see my 2008 post "0.0143%"

From "The Upstream Doctors"

More than 2,400 years ago, Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, opened his classic On Airs, Waters, and Places with this advice:

Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly, should proceed thus: in the first place to consider the seasons of the year, and what effects each of them produces for they are not at all alike, but differ much from themselves in regard to their changes. Then the winds, the hot and the cold, especially such as are common to all countries, and then such as are peculiar to each locality. We must also consider the qualities of the waters, for as they differ from one another in taste and weight, so also do they differ much in their qualities. In the same manner, when one comes into a city to which he is a stranger, he ought to consider its situation, how it lies as to the winds and the rising of the sun; for its influence is not the same whether it lies to the north or the south, to the rising or to the setting sun. These things one ought to consider most attentively, and concerning the waters which the inhabitants use, whether they be marshy and soft, or hard, and running from elevated and rocky situations, and then if saltish and unfit for cooking; and the ground, whether it be naked and deficient in water, or wooded and well watered, and whether it lies in a hollow, confined situation, or is elevated and cold; and the mode in which the inhabitants live, and what are their pursuits, whether they are fond of drinking and eating to excess, and given to indolence, or are fond of exercise and labor, and not given to excess in eating and drinking.

 Hippocrates and a long line of standard-bearers who have followed him have called for an approach in medicine that is capable of appreciating and addressing the social context of health.* I share the hope that all patients and professionals within the health care system better understand this.

Manchanda, Rishi (2013-06-06). The Upstream Doctors: Medical Innovators Track Sickness to Its Source (Kindle Single) (TED Books) (Kindle Locations 878-892). TED Conferences. Kindle Edition. 

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More to come...