Reducing the Impact of Poverty on Health and Human Development: Scientific Approaches

What are the many ways in which poverty contributes to ill health among the poor and to impeded development among poor children? This volume is the response of the New York Academy of Sciences to a request by the Council of Science Editors that medical and scientific journals all over the world publish an issue in October 2007 addressing the theme of poverty and human development. The Annals will publish advance chapters from this volume online to meet this global challenge, and the print publication will follow early in 2008.

Diverse elements contribute to poverty in the United States and elsewhere in the world, and the contributed chapters offer a look at this problem from the perspectives of many disciplines. The volume begins with chapters addressing specific diseases associated with poverty, such as tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS, lymphatic filiariasis, hookworm, and measles along with public health issues in the developing world. Other chapters address poverty and maternal health, health disparities, and human nutrition. The effect on human development of health care services, education, and housing are also addressed, as are the social, economic, engineering, and technology determinants of human development.

This volume, and this global publishing initiative, will raise awareness and stimulate interest and research into poverty and its pervasive effects on human development.

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