New paper out: economic crisis and obesity

This new study by our new post-doc Margarida Pereira suggests that the economic crisis in 2008 enhanced the social inequalities regarding childhood obesity in Portugal. These results aid the development of evidence-based strategies to lessen the social inequities in health outcomes created by the crisis.

The paper is published in the journal Public Health and can be found here: The economic crisis impact on the body mass index of children living in distinct urban environments – ScienceDirect

New paper out: “Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic among migrants: An innovative, system-level, interdisciplinary approach is needed to improve public health”

Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic among migrants: An innovative, system-level, interdisciplinary approach is needed to improve public health - Esperanza Diaz, Svenn-Eirik Mamelund, Jarle Eid, Henriette Sinding Aasen, Oddvar Martin Kaarbøe,...

Why is a new approach needed to reduce ethnic inequalities in pandemic disease burden & improve public health? In this paper, the PANSOC Centre leader discuss this question in collaboration with Esperanza Díaz Pérez and her colleagues at the Pandemic Research Center in Bergen and also colleagues at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

The paper is published in Scandinavian Journal of Public Health and can be found here:

Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic among migrants: An innovative, system-level, interdisciplinary approach is needed to improve public health – Esperanza Diaz, Svenn-Eirik Mamelund, Jarle Eid, Henriette Sinding Aasen, Oddvar Martin Kaarbøe, Rebecca Jane Cox Brokstad, Siri Gloppen, Anders Beyer, Bernadette Nirmal Kumar, 2021 (sagepub.com)

Webinar video available

Last week, MSCA fellow Jessica Dimka presented her project on disability as a risk factor during the 1918 pandemic. Watch the video here:

https://hioa365-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/jara_oslomet_no/ESZHmya9nFpMkfelP-PGWpgBBDsKDgPGhuAuBbFmgVbhZQ?e=xiwyq6

Jessica noted several sources that helped determine disease values used in her simulation model (and similar models for Newfoundland communities – see work by her PhD supervisor, Lisa Sattenspiel, and their colleagues). These sources include:

“‘An Avalanche of Unexpected Sickness’: Institutions and Disease in 1918 and Today.” Chelsea Chamberlain. June 23, 2020. Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. https://www.shgape.org/an-avalanche-of-unexpected-sickness/

Ferguson, N. M., Fraser, C., Donnelly, C. A., Ghani, A. C., & Anderson, R. M. (2004). Public health risk from the avian H5N1 influenza epidemic. Science, 304(5673), 968–969. https:// doi.org/10.1126/science.1096898

Mills, C. E., Robins, J. M., & Lipsitch, M. (2004). Transmissibility of 1918 pandemic influenza. Nature, 432, 904–906. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03063

“How does epidemics end?”

The 10th and last webinar this spring is held by associate professor at University of Oxford, Erica Charters on June 10 at 1600-1700 (CET).

Please send e-mail to masv@oslomet.no to get the zoom-link

See Charters personal page here: Dr Erica Charters | Faculty of History (ox.ac.uk)

echarters

Blurb: As COVID-19 drags on and vaccines seem to promise widespread immunity, the world’s attention has turned to predicting how the present pandemic will end. Yet how do societies know when an epidemic has ended and normal life can resume? What criteria and markers indicate an epidemic’s end? Who has the insight, authority, and credibility to decipher these signs? Although researchers have paid a great deal of attention to the origins of epidemics and to the climactic high points of outbreaks, they have paid little attention to how epidemics actually end. This talk will redirect attention to the ending of epidemics, making use of historical and other disciplinary research to provide a tentative framework for outlining how epidemics end, as part of the interdisciplinary project ‘How Epidemics End’, based at the University of Oxford. 

Mamelund is holding a key-note at the Annual Posthumus Conference 2021

In this key-note titled “Social Disparities & Pandemics, Mamelund will 1) present results showing that social inequality was a forgotten factor in pandemic preparedness before the COVID-19 pandemic, and speculate why this was the case; 2) present results on the social inequalities in COVID-19 pandemic disease burden and call for more research on the distal and proximal causes of these disparities; and 3) discuss how we can take both medical and social vulnerability into account in pandemic preparedness to be better prepared for the next pandemic.

To register for the conference, see here: Annual Posthumus Conference 2021 ‘Epidemics and Social Inequality’, 20-21 May – N.W. Posthumus Institute (ru.nl)