Global healthGlobal health is the health of the populations in the worldwide context; it has been defined as "the area of study, research, and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide". Problems that transcend national borders or have a global political and economic impact are often emphasized. Thus, global health is about worldwide health improvement (including mental health), reduction of disparities, and protection against global threats that disregard national borders, including the most common causes of human death and years of life lost from a global perspective.
World Health OrganizationThe World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland and has six regional offices and 150 field offices worldwide. The WHO was established on 7 April 1948 and convened its first meeting on 24 July of that year. It incorporated the assets, personnel, and duties of the League of Nations' Health Organization and the Paris-based Office International d'Hygiène Publique, including the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
Women's healthWomen's health differs from that of men in many unique ways. Women's health is an example of population health, where health is defined by the World Health Organization as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity". Often treated as simply women's reproductive health, many groups argue for a broader definition pertaining to the overall health of women, better expressed as "The health of women".
Disease burdenDisease burden is the impact of a health problem as measured by financial cost, mortality, morbidity, or other indicators. It is often quantified in terms of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) or disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Both of these metrics quantify the number of years lost due to disability (YLDs), sometimes also known as years lost due to disease or years lived with disability/disease.
Mass dewormingMass deworming, also called preventive chemotherapy, is the process of treating large numbers of people, particularly children, for helminthiasis (for example soil-transmitted helminths (STH)) and schistosomiasis in areas with a high prevalence of these conditions. It involves treating everyone – often all children who attend schools, using existing infrastructure to save money – rather than testing first and then only treating selectively.
Big dataBig data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data-processing application software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with higher complexity (more attributes or columns) may lead to a higher false discovery rate. Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe big data is the one associated with a large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller amounts.
DataIn common usage and statistics, data (USˈdætə; UKˈdeɪtə) is a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted formally. A datum is an individual value in a collection of data. Data is usually organized into structures such as tables that provide additional context and meaning, and which may themselves be used as data in larger structures.
Evaluation strategyIn a programming language, an evaluation strategy is a set of rules for evaluating expressions. The term is often used to refer to the more specific notion of a parameter-passing strategy that defines the kind of value that is passed to the function for each parameter (the binding strategy) and whether to evaluate the parameters of a function call, and if so in what order (the evaluation order). The notion of reduction strategy is distinct, although some authors conflate the two terms and the definition of each term is not widely agreed upon.
Disability-adjusted life yearThe disability-adjusted life year (DALY) is a measure of overall disease burden, expressed as the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death. It was developed in the 1990s as a way of comparing the overall health and life expectancy of different countries. The DALY has become more common in the field of public health and health impact assessment (HIA). It not only includes the potential years of life lost due to premature death, but also includes equivalent years of 'healthy' life lost by virtue of being in states of poor health or disability.
EvaluationIn common usage, evaluation is a systematic determination and assessment of a subject's merit, worth and significance, using criteria governed by a set of standards. It can assist an organization, program, design, project or any other intervention or initiative to assess any aim, realisable concept/proposal, or any alternative, to help in decision-making; or to ascertain the degree of achievement or value in regard to the aim and objectives and results of any such action that has been completed.
ComorbidityIn medicine, comorbidity - from Latin morbus ("sickness"), co ("together"), -ity (as if - several sicknesses together) - is the presence of one or more additional conditions often co-occurring (that is, concomitant or concurrent) with a primary condition. Comorbidity describes the effect of all other conditions an individual patient might have other than the primary condition of interest, and can be physiological or psychological.
HelminthiasisHelminthiasis, also known as worm infection, is any macroparasitic disease of humans and other animals in which a part of the body is infected with parasitic worms, known as helminths. There are numerous species of these parasites, which are broadly classified into tapeworms, flukes, and roundworms. They often live in the gastrointestinal tract of their hosts, but they may also burrow into other organs, where they induce physiological damage.
HealthIn common usage and medicine, health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity". A variety of definitions have been used for different purposes over time. Health can be promoted by encouraging healthful activities, such as regular physical exercise and adequate sleep, and by reducing or avoiding unhealthful activities or situations, such as smoking or excessive stress.
Lazy evaluationIn programming language theory, lazy evaluation, or call-by-need, is an evaluation strategy which delays the evaluation of an expression until its value is needed (non-strict evaluation) and which also avoids repeated evaluations (by the use of sharing). The benefits of lazy evaluation include: The ability to define control flow (structures) as abstractions instead of primitives. The ability to define potentially infinite data structures. This allows for more straightforward implementation of some algorithms.
Cost–utility analysisCost–utility analysis (CUA) is a form of economic analysis used to guide procurement decisions. The most common and well-known application of this analysis is in pharmacoeconomics, especially health technology assessment (HTA). In health economics, the purpose of CUA is to estimate the ratio between the cost of a health-related intervention and the benefit it produces in terms of the number of years lived in full health by the beneficiaries. Hence it can be considered a special case of cost-effectiveness analysis, and the two terms are often used interchangeably.
Maternal healthMaternal health is the health of women during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period. In most cases, maternal health encompasses the health care dimensions of family planning, preconception, prenatal, and postnatal care in order to ensure a positive and fulfilling experience. In other cases, maternal health can reduce maternal morbidity and mortality. Maternal health revolves around the health and wellness of pregnant women, particularly when they are pregnant, at the time they give birth, and during child-raising.
Group actionIn mathematics, a group action on a space is a group homomorphism of a given group into the group of transformations of the space. Similarly, a group action on a mathematical structure is a group homomorphism of a group into the automorphism group of the structure. It is said that the group acts on the space or structure. If a group acts on a structure, it will usually also act on objects built from that structure. For example, the group of Euclidean isometries acts on Euclidean space and also on the figures drawn in it.
ImplementationImplementation is the realization of an application, execution of a plan, idea, model, design, specification, standard, algorithm, policy, or the administration or management of a process or objective. In computer science, an implementation is a realization of a technical specification or algorithm as a program, software component, or other computer system through computer programming and deployment. Many implementations may exist for a given specification or standard.
Neglected tropical diseasesNeglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a diverse group of tropical infections that are common in low-income populations in developing regions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. They are caused by a variety of pathogens, such as viruses, bacteria, protozoa, and parasitic worms (helminths). These diseases are contrasted with the "big three" infectious diseases (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria), which generally receive greater treatment and research funding.
Group (mathematics)In mathematics, a group is a non-empty set with an operation that satisfies the following constraints: the operation is associative, has an identity element, and every element of the set has an inverse element. Many mathematical structures are groups endowed with other properties. For example, the integers with the addition operation is an infinite group, which is generated by a single element called 1 (these properties characterize the integers in a unique way).