Healthcare providers and public health practitioners know that disadvantaged communities suffer from chronic disease -- asthma, heart disease, obesity, cancer, and others -- at far greater rates than do others. From PSR's Environmental Health Policy Institute. Read more »

This one-year pilot program aimed to develop culturally and linguistically appropriate training resource guide, complete with several trainer tools as well as fact-sheets and case studies about environmental health for staff of Migrant and Seasonal Head Start and the Migrant and Seasonal Health Clinics. Read more »

Back in the 60s peace activists sported a bumper sticker that read: “War is not good for children and other living creatures.” In a way, that sums up Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel’s “War and Public Health,” where 46 experts on everything from epidemiology to international law weigh in on the authors’ central premise: “War and militarism have catastrophic effects on human health and well being.” Read more »

PSR Maine and Maine Primary Care Association's program on domestic violence. Read more »

The poor have poor health. At first blush that is neither new nor surprising. Perhaps it should be more surprising than it is. In rich countries, such as the United States, the nature of poverty has changed—people do not die from lack of clean water and sanitary facilities or from famine—and yet, persistently, those at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale have worse health than those above them in the hierarchy. Read more »

This paper describes a spatial analysis of poverty in the United States at the county level for 2000. Read more »

Social justice in health care requires universal coverage and ensured access to care, whether through social insurance, private insurance, or some combination. Read more »

Real after-tax incomes jumped by an average of nearly $180,000 for the top 1 percent of households in 2005, while rising just $400 for middle-income households and $200 for lowerincome households, according to new data from the Congressional Budget Office. Read more »

When asked about globalization, Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, replied, “There is no alternative.” Her reply was shortened to “TINA,” which some people think is a newly discovered law of nature. Yet, public resistance to this new corporatecentered trade is increasing. What relevance does this have to American physicians? Does globalization affect health? Read more »

The PSR Social Justice Committee has been meeting over the past year to develop PSR programs in the areas of social justice. Read more »

A World Health Organization report on health equity Read more »

Senate Joint Resolution 19 condemns the practice of torture and requests health professionals to report abusive interrogation tactics. Read more »

Statement by Jose Quiroga, M.D. before the California Senate Business Professions and Economic Development Committee, January 14, 2008. Read more »

Of all the approaches to ending firearm violence, including legal and regulatory, correctional, educational, economic, human rights, and international treaties, the public health approach has been relatively little used. Read more »

Because there would be little health workers could do to prepare for the consequences of a nuclear attack or to care for the victims, physicians and other health workers bare a social responsibility to work to prevent such an attack. Read more »

This is a beautiful meditative essay on identity by Goncourt Prize-winning French novelist Amin Maalouf. Its main question is central to life after the attack on the World Trade Center. What about how we create identities in a globalized world would lead someone to purposely slaughter thousands of innocent human beings? Read more »