Tackling social factors to save lives in India.

We Need Compassionate Leadership Management Based on Evidence to Defeat COVID-19

The current pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has had unprecedented reach and shown the need for strong, compassionate and evidence-based decisions to effectively stop the spread of the disease and save lives. While aggressive in its response, Rwanda prioritized the lives of its people – a human right that some governments forget to focus on. The country t...

In a Disaster, Social Media Has the Power to Save Lives

Giving everyone the health of the educated: an examination of whether social change would save more lives than medical advances.

OBJECTIVES Social determinants of health, such as inadequate education, contribute greatly to mortality rates. We examined whether correcting the social conditions that account for excess deaths among individuals with inadequate education might save more lives than medical advances (e.g., new drugs and devices). METHODS Using US vital statistics data for 1996 through 2002, we applied indirect...

On the wrong side of the trolley track: neural correlates of relative social valuation.

Using moral dilemmas, we (i) investigate whether stereotypes motivate people to value ingroup lives over outgroup lives and (ii) examine the neurobiological correlates of relative social valuation using fMRI. Saving ingroup members, who seem warm and competent (e.g. Americans), was most morally acceptable in the context of a dilemma where one person was killed to save five people. Extreme outgr...

Identifying Factors Associated with Maternal Deaths in Jharkhand, India: A Verbal Autopsy Study

Maternal mortality has been identified as a priority issue in health policy and research in India. The country, with an annual decrease of maternal mortality rate by 4.9% since 1990, now records 63,000 maternal deaths a year. India tops the list of countries with high maternal mortality. Based on a verbal autopsy study of 403 maternal deaths, conducted in 2008, this paper explores the missed op...