Reduction in Asthma Hospitalizations, Definitions of Childhood Asthma; Confirmation of Asthma; Adult Asthma Trends Rapid reduction in hospitalizations after an intervention to manage severe asthma (ERJ – Souza-Machado et al.) – Evaluation of the Programme for Control of Asthma in Bahia (ProAR) which focused on providing free management of severe asthma. Achieved an 82% decline [...]
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Missing populations in global health
I spent last week in the United Arab Emirates, attending a great conference sponsored by UAE University in Al-Ain to raise awareness of global health problems in the Middle East and neighboring Asia, and to draw attention to the region and its populations and health problems among the global health community. As a result, I’ve [...]
IDD meeting – Overview of the respiratory generic market
Last week in London I gave a presentation on the Spiroscout GPS inhaler device at the Inhaled Drug Delivery conference. It was a great meeting and I thought well worth writing up a few words on some of the presentations over the course of the next couple of weeks. One of my favorites was a [...]
India’s fury of frugal innovation
A recent article in the Economist surveys the drive toward frugal innovations in the Indian health care marketplace. This brief, compelling review describes the strategies and entrepreneurial activity being applied to identify and develop affordable approaches to a range of businesses in the health sector – from the delivery of advanced surgical care, to medicines, [...]
Global affordability and availability of asthma medication
In my chapter in Anthropology and Public Health I noted that global respiratory health activities and guidelines tend to assume the affordability of asthma medications. I wrote a bit about the lack of affordable antiasthma medications in India and other low income settings, and how questions of affordability figure into the day-to-day decisions of physicians. [...]
Low-cost, open-source spirometry
Chronic respiratory disease is a serious and growing threat to global health. The WHO estimates that 300 million people worldwide have asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, already one of the top killers. Having worked in clinical settings in low and lower-middle income countries, I’ve always been struck by the absence of basic equipment like [...]
New edition of Anthropology and Public Health published
The first edition of Anthropology and Public Health, which was edited by Robert Hahn, is one of my favorite books of medical anthropology – full of great pieces like Dorothy Mull’s report on acute respiratory infections in Pakistan (I’ve written about it here). Last year, Marcia Inhorn and Robert Hahn asked me to write a [...]
How do physicians in India treat asthma exacerbations?
Raj B. Singh MD (Apollo Hospital – Chennai) and I recently published a paper in the Clinical Respiratory Journal describing the management of asthma exacerbations by physicians in India. We used a well-known epidemiological instrument, the ISAAC video questionnaire, to simulate five presentations of asthma. For more details, please take a look: [abstract] [pdf]
About
Medical anthropologist, asthma epidemiologist in Madison, WI. Co-Founder of Reciprocal Labs and Asthmapolis.
