Background: The use of pesticides in agriculture has been associated with the destruction of biodiversity and damage to human health. A marked reduction in pesticide use is urgently required globally, but whether this can be achieved rapidly and at scale is unclear. We aimed to assess whether government-legislated and funded organic farming training in Andhra Pradesh, India, reduced pesticide use by farmers and sales of pesticides by pesticide retailers.
This study supports SDGs 3 and 6 by investigating a low-cost behavioural intervention designed to increase latrine use and safe disposal of child faeces in India. The study found the intervention modestly increased latrine use and markedly increased safe disposal of child faeces in the short term, but was unlikely to reduce exposure to pathogens to a level necessary to achieve health gains.
Background: Ozone effects on lung function are particularly important to understand in the context of the air pollution-health outcomes epidemiologic literature, given the complex relationships between ozone and other air pollutants with known lung function effects. Research Question: What has been learned about the association between ozone exposures and lung function from epidemiology studies published from 2013 through 2020?
An Article in support of SDGs 3 and 13, highlighting widespread climate anxiety and dissatisfaction with government responses to climate change among chidren globally, with government inaction on climate change described as a human rights failure that could have considerable, long-lasting, and incremental negative implications for the mental health of children and young people.
COVID-19 is disrupting and transforming the world. We argue that transformations catalysed by this pandemic should be used to improve human and planetary health and wellbeing. This paradigm shift requires decision makers and policy makers to go beyond building back better, by nesting the economic domain of sustainable development within social and environmental domains.
Background: Natural outdoor environments including green spaces play an important role in preserving population health and wellbeing in cities, but the number of deaths that could be prevented by increasing green space in European cities is not known. We aimed to estimate the number of natural-cause deaths among adult residents that could be prevented in cities in 31 European countries, if the WHO recommendation for universal access to green space was achieved.
This Comment supports SDGs 3 and 10 by discussing the UK's reliance on digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although a digital-first policy aims to reduce health inequalities, challenges such as low usage of the internet and low uptake of digital COVID-19 technologies among older, minority ethnic groups, could mean that the strategy instead reinforces the unequal effects of COVID-19.
Background: The effectivity role of community mental health worker (CMHWs) has several important gaps in the service provision at the community level. This study aimed to explain community mental health workers' effectivity role for the rehabilitation of mental health illness. Methods: A systematic review searched five electronic databases (Scopus, PubMed, ScienceDirect, CINAHL, and ProQuest) for previous studies published between 2015 and 2020. The Centre for Review and Dissemination and the Joanna Briggs Institute Guideline used to assess quality and Prisma checklist guided this review.
Slow onset events by definition occur gradually and it might be expected that policy-makers as a result pay less attention to them than to immediate risks or ‘shock’ crises. If this is true and what can be done about it are important issues for climate change policy-making, given the gradual nature of many climate related issues.
Background: Almost a quarter of the world's undernourished people live in India. We tested the effects of three nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) interventions on maternal and child nutrition in India. Methods: We did a parallel, four-arm, observer-blind, cluster-randomised trial in Keonjhar district, Odisha, India. A cluster was one or more villages with a combined minimum population of 800 residents.
