Consider these astounding facts from the World Health Organization (2019):
Two billion people do not have basic sanitation facilities such as toilets.
Over 10% of the world’s population eat food irrigated by untreated wastewater.
Poor sanitation is linked to diseases such as cholera (up to 4 million cases a year) and typhoid (up to 20 million cases a year).
Global child malnutrition is down from 39.3% in 1990 to 21.3% in 2020, but this still leaves one in five children undernourished, even in the United States.
A “western diet” of processed foods contributes to chronic diseases like diabetes and cancer.
The United Nations General Assembly recognized access to safe, clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right in 2010, and there has been progress toward universal access to clean drinking water, but access to sanitation is lagging. A large proportion of untreated or partially treated wastewater in developing countries continues to be discharged into rivers, lakes, and ultimately, the oceans. The World Health Organization estimates that half the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas by 2025 (WHO, 2019).
With food, the situation is similar. Child malnutrition rates are lower than 30 years ago, but many millions of children and adults often go to sleep hungry. Food production increased dramatically in the last century with new seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, but these required more water and money, and they depleted the soil. Farmers went bankrupt, and productivity declined. Nutritional standards also fell as whole populations were weaned away from traditional balanced diets to processed foods, and the prevalence of diet-related diseases like diabetes became pandemic.
Strategies to addressing these fundamental global health problems include recycling wastewater, improved water collection and irrigation methods, organic food production, soil development, and strengthening of food distribution systems. However, these strategies, like public health work on many problems, are subject to intense political, financial, technical, and administrative forces.
Access to clean water and adequate food are social and environmental determinants of health and are themselves determined by other factors. This kind of complexity is common to many public health problems and demonstrates why we must reach across disciplines and technical and political boundaries to find solutions. A core message in this course is that a ‘web’ of determinants lies beneath most global health problems, and to address them we need to think and act collectively.
In this Discussion, you will look at how a “web” of social, environmental, and economic factors contribute to a health problem related to either water or food. Your Instructor will assign your topic to consider a water-related or food-related disease or health problem. You will analyze the “web of causation” for that disease or health problem and investigate how the problem is (or is not) being addressed. You will create a presentation to explain the problem and what has been done to address the problem.
THE ASSIGNMENT: THIS IS A POWER POINT I DO NOT NEEED SPEAKER NOTES CHANGE BID TO FIT
Prepare a 10-slide PowerPoint (PPT) Presentation (including title slide and reference slide)
Your Discussion submission will consist of a PowerPoint (PPT) presentation with brief “speaker notes” that identifies a water-related or food-related disease, explains the main contributing factors for that disease, and investigates how the problem is (or is not) being addressed. The speaker notes for each slide have a paragraph requirement, so be sure to follow the instructions in the template. It is not necessary to provide a recorded audio narration.
The presentation should be for public health professionals in a professional context. A single slide may not contain more than 50 words, so that it can be read at a glance. Remember, this is not an essay, but a brief presentation, which is typical at a professional conference. Your ten slides should include the following:
Title slide
Analysis of the relationship among water (or food) and global health problems.
Explanation of a specific global health problem related to water (or food).
Explanation of three determinants of the chosen problem.
Analysis of how the above determinants may be impacted by climate change.
Explanation of what is or could be done to resolve the problem.
Support your presentation with evidence citing scholarly literature:
Reference slide: Five or more peer reviewed articles, less than 5 years old.
All references must be in APA format (7th edition).
Note: Where you provide a reference, you must cite it in text at least once. Your citations must be in the PPT slide as well as in the speaker notes.
EACH BULLEt POINT NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED
