Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Global health inequalities and the “brain drain”

There are massive inequalities in global health opportunities and outcomes. Consider, for instance, that Japan has around twenty-one physicians per 10,000 people, while Malawi has only one physician for every fifty thousand people. This radical inequality in medical skills and talents has, obviously, bad consequences for health; people born in Malawi will live, on average, 32 years fewer than their counterparts born in Japan.

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How much do you know about travel medicine?

Is garlic or citronella more useful in repelling insects? Which disease is typically identified as an ‘urban’ disease? What is the most reliable way to purify water? Which factors contributes most to psychological stress in frequent international travellers? Whether you’re climbing Mount Everest in the Himalayas, making your way through the Amazon, or just curious about various hazards abroad, prepare for your travels and test your knowledge of the unique dangers and diseases faced in travel medicine.

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Evolution: Some difficult problems

Two other major and largely unsolved problems in evolution, at the opposite extremes of the history of life, are the origin of the basic features of living cells and the origin of human consciousness. In contrast to the questions we have just been discussing, these are unique events in the history of life.

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Youth violence

Perhaps one of the most politically unpopular truths about violence is that it is young people who are most vulnerable to it, not the elderly or children, but youth. Global estimates from the World Health Organization are that, each year, 200,000 young people are murdered.

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The woman who changed the world

Society owes a debt to Henrietta Lacks. Modern life benefits from long-term access to a small sample of her cells that contained incredibly unusual DNA. As Rebecca Skloot reports in her best-selling book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the story that unfolded after Lacks died at the age of 31 is one of injustice, tragedy, bravery, innovation and scientific discovery.

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Preparing for world travel [infographic]

Are you planning a trip to Brazil, Cambodia, The Dominican Republic, Haiti, or another destination that requires immunizations in advance of your arrival? Are you a health care worker, about to travel to a destination currently dealing with an epidemic or outbreak?

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Patients battle for justice

Is it possible that a disease as impairing as Type II diabetes mellitus, congestive heart failure, Multiple Sclerosis, and end-stage renal disease could be repeatedly belittled and delegitimized by scientists and health care professionals? Tragically, this is the case for a devastating illness affecting over one million Americans, and these patients have been deprived of their basic rights to respect, appropriate diagnosis, and humane treatment.

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10 ways hospitals can heal the planet

A healthy and sustainable environment is a necessary foundation for human health. On that most people agree. But there is an interesting paradox in health care: As hospitals deliver life-saving care to people, their environmental footprint — pollution, energy use, waste production, etc. — can be harmful to our health. Here are 10 ways hospitals can heal the planet.

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Incorporating sex as a biological variable in preclinical research

In the spring of 2015 the National Institutes of Health announced new guidelines for the incorporation of sex as a biological variable in any research they fund. Chromosome compliment (XX for female, XY for male in all mammals), gonadal phenotype, and gamete size define sex as a biological parameter. (In contrast, gender is a human construction based on an individual or society’s perception of sex.)

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Grandparents Day: A reading list

On Sunday September 13, the United States will celebrate National Grandparents’ Day. This annual holiday, held on the first Sunday after Labor Day, celebrates our grandmothers and grandfathers. Marian McQuade, grandmother to 43 and great-grandmother of 15, is widely credited with founding the holiday.

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Managing high-risk pregnancies in obstetrics today

Every year, across the world 287,000 women die in pregnancy and childbirth along with at least 2.6 million stillbirths, of which about 50% are intrapartum deaths. Among 133 million babies born alive each year, 2.8 million die in the first week of life. The latest MBRRACE reports of the UK show a maternal mortality rate of 10 per 100,000 women giving birth (December 2014).

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Predicting future cognition in preterm children with MRI

In the wake of the development of advanced neonatal intensive medical care, more and more children born very preterm manage to beat the previously tough odds and survive the perils of infections and respiratory distress that are some of the common problems in the group. While this is one of the success stories of modern medicine, long-term follow-up of premature-born pediatric cohorts show that the obstacles don’t cease with the need of intensive medical care.

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Scrutinizing the script of the medieval ‘Tremulous Hand of Worcester’

How would we know if a medieval person had a neurological disorder? If we did know, would it be possible to pinpoint the type of condition? What insight can we gain about the practical impact of disorders on medieval life? Fortunately, a physical record survives that provides a reliable window into the health of medieval people—or, at least, those who were able to write.

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The future of aesthetic surgery

Plastic surgery, aesthetic surgery, cosmetic surgery: the field has many different names. Yet despite its high profile today, many people even within the medical field have a limited understanding of it and the drastic changes it’s undergoing. From noninvasive procedures to patient education, aesthetic surgeons face a variety of new challenges. We sat down with Foad Nahai, editor of Aesthetic Surgery Journal‎, to learn more about developments in the field.

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