WHO Violence cuts short the lives of millions of people across the world each year, and damages the lives of millions more. It knows no boundaries of geography, race, age or income. It strikes at children, young people, women and the elderly. It finds its way into homes, schools and the workplace. Men and women everywhere have the right to live their lives and raise their children free from the fear of violence. We must help them enjoy that right by making it clearly understood that violence is preventable, and by working together to identify and address its underlying causes.

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World report on violence and health

During the past few decades, technologies such as remote sensing, geographical information systems, and global positioning systems have transformed the way the distribution of human population is studied and modeled in space and time. However, the mapping of populations remains constrained by the logistics of censuses and surveys. Consequently, spatially detailed changes across scales of days, weeks, or months, or even year to year, are difficult to assess and limit the application of human population maps in situations in which timely information is required, such as disasters, conflicts, or epidemics. Mobile phones (MPs) now have an extremely high penetration rate across the globe, and analyzing the spatiotemporal distribution of MP calls geolocated to the tower level may overcome many limitations of census-based approaches, provided that the use of MP data is properly assessed and calibrated. Using datasets of more than 1 billion MP call records from Portugal and France, we show how spatially and temporarily explicit estimations of population densities can be produced at national scales, and how these estimates compare with outputs produced using alternative human population mapping methods. We also demonstrate how maps of human population changes can be produced over multiple timescales while preserving the anonymity of MP users. With similar data being collected every day by MP network providers across the world, the prospect of being able to map contemporary and changing human population distributions over relatively short intervals exists, paving the way for new applications and a near real-time understanding of patterns and processes in human geography.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/45/15888.full.pdf

Dynamic population mapping using mobile phone data

Both academic publications and public media often make inappropriate use of incommensurate conflict statistics, creating misleading impressions about patterns in global warfare. This article clarifies the distinction between combatant deaths, battle deaths, and war deaths. A new dataset of battle deaths in armed conflict is presented for the period 1946-2002. Global battle deaths have been decreasing over most of this period, mainly due to a decline in interstate and internationalised civil armed conflict. It is far more difficult to accurately assess the number of war deaths in conflicts both past and present. But there are compelling reasons to believe that there is a need for increased attention to non-battle causes of mortality, especially displacement and disease in conflict studies. Therefore, it is demographers, public health specialists, and epidemiologists who can best describe the true human cost of many recent armed conflicts and assess the actions necessary to reduce that toll.

https://www.prio.org/Global/upload/CSCW/Data/BattleDeath/Monitoring%20trends%20in%20global%20combat%20EJP.pdf

Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths

With the surging of smartphone sensing, wireless networking, and mobile social networking techniques, Mobile Crowd Sensing and Computing (MCSC) has become a promising paradigm for cross-space and large-scale sensing. MCSC extends the vision of participatory sensing by leveraging both participatory sensory data from mobile devices (offline) and user-contributed data from mobile social networking services (online). Further, it explores the complementary roles and presents the fusion/collaboration of machine and human intelligence in the crowd sensing and computing processes. This article characterizes the unique features and novel application areas of MCSC and proposes a reference framework for building human-in-the-loop MCSC systems. We further clarify the complementary nature of human and machine intelligence and envision the potential of deep-fused human--machine systems. We conclude by discussing the limitations, open issues, and research opportunities of MCSC.

Mobile Crowd Sensing and Computing: The Review of an Emerging Human-Powered Sensing Paradigm

Global change includes climate change and climate variability, land use, water storage and irrigation, human population growth and urbanization, trade and travel, and chemical pollution. Impacts on vector-borne diseases, including malaria, dengue fever, infections by other arboviruses, schistosomiasis, trypanosomiasis, onchocerciasis, and leishmaniasis are reviewed. While climate change is global in nature and poses unknown future risks to humans and natural ecosystems, other local changes are occurring more rapidly on a global scale and are having significant effects on vector-borne diseases. History is invaluable as a pointer to future risks, but direct extrapolation is no longer possible because the climate is changing. Researchers are therefore embracing computer simulation models and global change scenarios to explore the risks. Credible ranking of the extent to which different vector-borne diseases will be affected awaits a rigorous analysis. Adaptation to the changes is threatened by the ongoing loss of drugs and pesticides due to the selection of resistant strains of pathogens and vectors. The vulnerability of communities to the changes in impacts depends on their adaptive capacity, which requires both appropriate technology and responsive public health systems. The availability of resources in turn depends on social stability, economic wealth, and priority allocation of resources to public health.

Global Change and Human Vulnerability to Vector-Borne Diseases

Background: Population movements following disasters can cause important increases in morbidity and mortality. Without knowledge of the locations of affected people, relief assistance is compromised. No rapid and accurate method exists to track population movements after disasters. We used position data of subscriber identity module (SIM) cards from the largest mobile phone company in Haiti (Digicel) to estimate the magnitude and trends of population movements following the Haiti 2010 earthquake and cholera outbreak. Methods and Findings: Geographic positions of SIM cards were determined by the location of the mobile phone tower through which each SIM card connects when calling. We followed daily positions of SIM cards 42 days before the earthquake and 158 days after. To exclude inactivated SIM cards, we included only the 1.9 million SIM cards that made at least one call both pre-earthquake and during the last month of study. In Port-au-Prince there were 3.2 persons per included SIM card. We used this ratio to extrapolate from the number of moving SIM cards to the number of moving persons. Cholera outbreak analyses covered 8 days and tracked 138,560 SIM cards. An estimated 630,000 persons (197,484 Digicel SIM cards), present in Port-au-Prince on the day of the earthquake, had left 19 days post-earthquake. Estimated net outflow of people (outflow minus inflow) corresponded to 20% of the Port-au-Prince pre-earthquake population. Geographic distribution of population movements from Port-au-Prince corresponded well with results from a large retrospective, population-based UN survey. To demonstrate feasibility of rapid estimates and to identify areas at potentially increased risk of outbreaks, we produced reports on SIM card movements from a cholera outbreak area at its immediate onset and within 12 hours of receiving data. Conclusions Results suggest that estimates of population movements during disasters and outbreaks can be delivered rapidly and with potentially high validity in areas with high mobile phone use.

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Improved response to disasters and outbreaks by tracking population movements with mobile phone network data: a post-earthquake geospatial study in Haiti.

https://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/courses/bio621/misc/IraqMortality.pdf

Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey

OBJECTIVES: This paper examines the combined effects of a severe economic decline since 1989 and a tightening of the US embargo in 1992 on health and health care in Cuba. METHODS: Data from surveillance systems for nutrition, reportable diseases, and hospital diagnoses were reviewed. These sources were supplemented with utilization data from the national health system and interviews with health leaders. RESULTS: Changes in Cuba include declining nutritional levels, rising rates of infectious diseases and violent death, and a deteriorating public health infrastructure. But despite these threats, mortality levels for children and women remain low. Instead, much of the health impact of the economic decline of Cuba has fallen on adult men and the elderly. CONCLUSIONS: To be consistent with international humanitarian law, embargoes must not impede access to essential humanitarian goods. Yet this embargo has raised the cost of medical supplies and food Rationing, universal access to primary health services, a h...

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.87.1.15

The impact of the economic crisis and the US embargo on health in Cuba.

BACKGROUND:: Catastrophic disasters often are associated with massive structural, economic, and population devastation; less understood are the long-term mental health consequences This study measures the prevalence and predictors of mental health distress and disability of hurricane survivors over an extended period of recovery in a postdisaster setting METHODS:: A representative sample of 1077 displaced or greatly affected households was drawn in 2006 using a stratified cluster sampling of federally subsidized emergency housing settings in Louisiana and Mississippi, and of Mississippi census tracts designated as having experienced major damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 Two rounds of data collection were conducted: a baseline face-to-face interview at 6 to 12 months post-Katrina, and a telephone follow-up at 20 to 23 months after the disaster Mental health disability was measured using the Medical Outcome Study Short Form 12, version 2 mental component summary score Bivariate and multivariate analyses were conducted examining socioeconomic, demographic, situational, and attitudinal factors associated with mental health distress and disability RESULTS:: More than half of the cohort at both baseline and follow-up reported significant mental health distress Self-reported poor health and safety concerns were persistently associated with poorer mental health Nearly 2 years after the disaster, the greatest predictors of poor mental health included situational characteristics such as greater numbers of children in a household and attitudinal characteristics such as fatalistic sentiments and poor self-efficacy Informal social support networks were associated significantly with better mental health status Housing and economic circumstances were not independently associated with poorer mental health CONCLUSIONS:: Mental health distress and disability are pervasive issues among the US Gulf Coast adults and children who experienced long-term displacement or other serious effects as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita As time progresses postdisaster, social and psychological factors may play greater roles in accelerating or impeding recovery among affected populations Efforts to expand disaster recovery and preparedness policies to include long-term social re-engagement efforts postdisaster should be considered as a means of reducing mental health sequelae Language: en

/pdf/prevalence-and-predictors-of-mental-health-distress-post-31arv6kj8d.pdf

Prevalence and predictors of mental health distress post-Katrina: findings from the Gulf Coast Child and Family Health Study.

Although warfare is thought to be responsible for high and increasing levels of morbidity and mortality in the modern era, little comparative epidemiologic research is available on the subject. Most research on past wars has been carried out for purposes of military planning. The present report provides an overview of the direct health impacts of various wars on military and civilian populations during the last 200 years. Risk factors for injury and death are analyzed. Changes in weaponry, military strategy, and medical services are found to modify the health effects of warfare. ( JAMA . 1991;266:688-692)

https://jamanetwork.com/HttpHandlers/ArticlePdfHandler.ashx?journal=jama&articleId=390974&pdfFileName=jama_266_5_028.pdf

Richard Garfield

Papers

Improved response to disasters and outbreaks by tracking population movements with mobile phone network data: a post-earthquake geospatial study in Haiti.

Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey

The impact of the economic crisis and the US embargo on health in Cuba.

Prevalence and predictors of mental health distress post-Katrina: findings from the Gulf Coast Child and Family Health Study.

Epidemiologic analysis of warfare. A historical review.