The official website for the European Union-funded Consortium for Health Policy and Systems Analysis in Africa (CHEPSAA) has just been launched. CHEPSAA is working with universities in Africa and Europe to strengthen teaching, research and policy networking activities for the rapidly emerging field of health policy and systems research and analysis (HPSR+A). CHEPSAA’s aim is to build the field of HPSA through: assessing the capacity development needs of the African members and national policy networks; supporting the development of African researchers and educators; strengthening the development of HPSA courses; strengthening networking among the health policy and systems education, research and policy communities; and strengthening the process of getting research into policy and practice. The new website gathers HPSR+A resources, pooling information from sources far wider than CHEPSAA for teachers, researchers, students, policy-makers and decision-makers. The website contains a number of resources: classic texts, recommended reading, teaching materials, links to core HPSA journals and material by CHEPSAA.
Useful Resources
The Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa is renowned for its strong and comprehensive provisions on women’s rights. For the first time in international law, it explicitly sets forth the reproductive right of women to medical abortion when pregnancy results from rape or incest or when the continuation of pregnancy endangers the health or life of the mother. This Guide provides step-by-step guidance for using the Protocol at local, national, and regional levels. It explains how to bring women’s rights abuses that violate the Protocol before domestic courts and regional justice mechanisms like the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and analyses key cases related to women’s rights decided by the African Commission. The Guide also provides activists with more general strategies for the popularisation and domestication of the Protocol to protect the rights of African women and girls and ensure they have complete access to justice.
The Picha Mtaani national peace building initiative and exhibition tour contains photographs of Kenya’s 2007/8 post election violence, which have been displayed throughout Kenya since 2008. The exhibition has enjoyed tremendous support from the Kenyan public, as evidenced by the participation of over 700,000 young people, the submission of 30,000 completed questionnaires and the subsequent signing of more than 61,000 peace pledges during the exhibition series. This project involving community photography may be of interest to community photographers looking for ideas. Visit the address given above, as well as the following flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pichamtaani/6440573085/in/photostream/lightbox/
The official website for the EU-funded Consortium for Health Policy & Systems Analysis in Africa (CHEPSAA) has just been launched. CHEPSAA is working with universities in Africa and Europe to strengthen teaching, research & policy networking activities for the rapidly emerging field of health policy and systems research and analysis. The new website collates resources and information on health policy and systems research for teachers, researchers, students, policy-makers & decision-makers, including recommended readings selected by experts; open access teaching materials; course & event news and more.
The Asia Pacific network of HealthGAEN has just launched its new website. It is intended to function as a tool for information sharing and helping to keep people connected around issues affecting health inequities, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, rather like EQUINET in east, central and southern Africa. AP-HealthGAEN is a partnership of researchers, policymakers and non-government organisations across Asia Pacific - a region that stretches from Mongolia in the north to New Zealand in the south and from Kiribati in the east to India in the west. The network analyses the various ways in which health equity is impacted through the intersection of the social, environmental, health-care and development agendas, drawing on a range of disciplinary expertise and aims to build action on four fronts: collaborative learning and action; cross border action; cross sectoral action; collaborative learning and action.
Originally published in 2009, this updated version of Setting Up Community Health Programmes covers all the basic principles of community-based health care, setting up specific programmes, and managing them, while reflecting post-millennium realities. Topics covered include: health awareness and motivation; learning about the community; setting up a community health clinic; setting up community programmes for TB, maternal health and family planning; a community development approach to HIV/AIDS; setting up environmental health improvements; and managing personnel and finance. Designed for both urban and rural locations, this manual addresses the needs of health workers, programme managers, doctors, nurses, health planners and all those who seek an evidence-based and practical approach to health care in the developing world.
Some of the main reasons for occupational health and safety deficiencies in small-scale mining are unawareness of risks of chronic occupational diseases and inadequately implemented education and training. The key needs of the sector is to provide access to knowledge and tools that will raise awareness and disseminate affordable, best practice methods for use by small-scale mines. With this in mind, the CSIR Occupational Health and Ergonomics research group have developed the OREOHS tool, which is a comprehensive model for hazard identification and risk assessment of occupational health stressors that can be applied to mining operations of various types and sizes but in particular by small-scale enterprises. A scoring system was included in the checklists to facilitate a quantifying of the risk which would further enable a risk rating and ranking of health hazards in the workplace. Guidelines for the use of the organisational evaluation of risks associated with exposure to health stressors and guidelines for the use of each checklist are included. The OREOHS can be transposed onto a spreadsheet that will facilitate the automatic calculation of the risk rating and ranking of health hazards in a small mine.
This highly illustrated guide helps health promoters, development workers, environmental activists, and community leaders take charge of their environmental health. The book contains activities to stimulate critical thinking and discussion, inspirational stories, and instructions for simple health technologies such as water purification methods, safe toilets, and non-toxic cleaning products. 23 chapters cover topics including: preventing and reducing harm from toxic pollution; forestry, restoring land, and planting trees; protecting community water and watersheds; food security and sustainable farming; environmental health at home; solid waste and health care waste; and how to reduce harm from mining, oil, and energy production. With dozens of activities to stimulate critical thinking and discussion, instructions for simple health technologies such as safe toilets, safe cleaning methods, and water purification methods, and hundreds of drawings to make the messages clear, the guide should be useful for people just beginning to address environmental health threats, as well as people with many years’ experience in the field.
This is the first of six films in the series "Bringing the Social to Rio+20". The film uses footage from recordings and interviews from the 2011 UNRISD conference, "Green Economy and Sustainable Development: Bringing Back the Social Dimension". It explores the green economy's potential as a path to inclusive, sustainable development and poverty eradication.
These six right-to-health pamphlets contain basic, easy to read information and can be placed in any South African public health service facility or distributed to patients and organisations working in public health. Topics include: community involvement; the Patients’ Rights Charter; individual and collective rights; access to information; and rights and resource allocation.