Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
With his right arm extended – pausing for just a moment – Senator John McCain flashed a thumbs-down and jarred the Senate floor. Audible gasps and commotion followed. At 1:29 am on 28 July, Senator McCain had just supplied the decisive “Nay” vote to derail the fourth and final bill voted on that night. With that, a seven-year pursuit to undo the Affordable Care Act had collapsed.
At the time of writing, many Australians are preoccupied with the recent result of the same-sex marriage survey (with 61.6% voting in favour of marriage equality). The survey’s result is indicative of a shift in the thinking about ‘rights’ in general, but also about ‘equality’ and what it means in practice. Unsurprisingly also, and as evidenced throughout the public and social media, all those who advocate for more open and inclusive society are pleased by what looks like a public surge for a social change.
When drafts of Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STP) for the 44 “footprints” of the NHS in England began to surface last year, a phrase caught my eye: “Championing the NHS Right Care approach to others within commissioner and provider organizations and building a consensus within the teams of those organizations”. This was the first bullet point for clinical leadership, from the 30 June 2016 version of the Cheshire and Merseyside STP.
Virtual Reality. Augmented Reality. Gamified Learning. Blended Learning. Mobile Learning. The list of technologies that promise to revolutionise medical education (or education in general) could go on, creating an exciting yet daunting task for the course leaders and educators who have to evaluate them.
Policy makers, organization, and governments have worked side-by-side with people living with AIDS as part of a global social movement for three decades. The success of the movement for HIV treatment access not only garnered billions of dollars of new money for HIV treatment, but also served to shift the public health paradigm from prevention-only to the provision long-term treatment.
There is a physician workforce crisis in primary care, both in the United States and United Kingdom. In the UK, half or more general practice physician training positions have been difficult to fill in certain parts of the country. In the US, the American Association of Medical Colleges estimates that by 2025 there will be a shortfall of between 15,000 and 35,000 primary care physicians nationally.
Microbes are everywhere. On door knobs, in your mouth, covering the New York City Subway, and festering on the kitchen sponge. The world is teeming with microbes—bustling communities of invisible organisms, including bacteria and fungi. Scientists are hard at work cataloging the microbial communities of people, buildings, and entire ecosystems. Many discoveries have shed light on how culture and behavior shape these communities.
In all clinical practices, students must learn to make meaning of clinical information such as, “What does it mean that the client said this or did that? What is the client’s body saying when it does or does not do this?” For music therapy students, there is the additional consideration of music, namely “What does it mean when the client plays music like this? What does it mean when the client hears this music like that?”
Although tuberculosis (TB) has plagued mankind for over 20,000 years and was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the early 1990s, political attention and funding for TB has remained low. This looks set to change for the first time. On 17 November 2017, 75 national ministers agreed to take urgent action to end TB by 2030.
Every day the news is flooded with stories of different types of violence. On what seems like a daily basis, we’re bombarded with relentless reports of violence in this country. Our register of national tragedies keeps growing: hate crimes, mass shootings, and #Metoo headlines are only the most recent outbreaks of an epidemic of violence in our homes, public spaces, and communities.
In 1967, Christiaan Barnard carried out the first ever human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. The patient and recipient of a new heart was 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky, and the success of the operation took centre-stage in the world’s media as hourly bulletins followed his recovery.
Around the world access to pain relief and to palliative care services is emerging as a growing public health issue. In many countries getting appropriate pain relieving drugs for those with advanced disease is constrained by overly-zealous laws and procedures. Likewise the provision of palliative care education, research and delivery, although making some headway and achieving policy recognition in places, is still extremely limited, often where the need is greatest.
According to the WHO, Streptococcus pneumoniae (also known as pneumococcus) is the fourth most frequent microbial cause of fatal infection. These bacteria commonly colonize the upper respiratory tract and are the most common cause of bacterial pneumonia and meningitis. Although much is known about pneumococcal biology and the diseases it causes, there are still many questions about the molecular biology and cellular processes of the bacterium.
Major incidents are defined as any incident ‘that requires the mobilisation and use of extraordinary resources’; with the NHS further expanding the definition of such events as ‘any incident where the location, number, severity, or type of live casualties requires extraordinary resources’. There have been many major incidents throughout history that have required an ‘extraordinary’ response by emergency services, medical personnel, and government bodies.
The first of December is World AIDS Day: a day to show support for those living with HIV, to commemorate those we have lost, and ultimately unite in the fight against HIV. To combat this pandemic though, we need to understand how the virus – and the wider virus group – reacts with the human body. In the following excerpt from Virus Hunt, Dorothy H. Crawford discusses the discovery and history of HIV and the retrovirus family.
In a 2013 interview on NPR celebrating the publication of her memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World, author Emily Rapp made two surprisingly different statements. In her book and on-the-air, Rapp said that she treasured every moment she’d had with her son Ronin, whose short life with Tay-Sachs Disease was the subject of her memoir. Indeed, her telling of Ronin’s story is vibrant, and her joy in sharing that story shines through her work.