The Global Health Impact Index: Promoting Global Health

Millions of people cannot access essential medicines they need for deadly diseases like malaria, tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS. There is good information on the need for drugs for these diseases but until now, no global estimate of the impact drugs are having on this burden. This paper presents a model measuring companies’ key malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS drugs’ consequences for global health (global-health-impact.org). It aggregates drugs’ impacts in several ways–by disease, country and originator-company. The methodology can be extended across diseases as well as drugs to provide a more extensive picture of the impact companies’ drugs are having on the global burden of disease. The study suggests that key malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS drugs are, together, ameliorating about 37% of the global burden of these diseases and Sanofi, Novartis, and Pfizer’s drugs are having the largest effect on this burden. Moreover, drug impacts vary widely across countries. This index provides important information for policy makers, pharmaceutical companies, countries, and other stake-holders that can help increase access to essential medicines.     

Focus: Health Equity: An Overview of Health Disparities in Asthma

Asthma is a heterogeneous disease characterized by inflammation in the respiratory airways which manifests clinically with wheezing, cough, and episodic periods of chest tightness; if left untreated it can lead to permanent obstruction or death. In the US, asthma affects all ages and genders, and individuals from racial and ethnic minority groups are disproportionately burdened by this disease. The financial cost of asthma exceeds $81 billion every year and despite all the resources invested, asthma is responsible for over 3,500 deaths annually in the nation. In this overview, we highlight important factors associated with health disparities in asthma. While they are complex and overlap, we group these factors in five domains: biological, behavioral, socio-cultural, built environment, and health systems. We review the biological domain in detail, which traditionally has been best studied. We also acknowledge that implicit and explicit racism is an important contributor to asthma disparities and responsible for many of the socio-environmental factors that worsen outcomes in this disease.