Diabetes and related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) account for over 60% of the world's annual deaths, untold personal suffering, and an economically crippling burden of lost productivity. Despite the body of evidence and various calls to action, historically, the global response has bordered on apathy. Although diabetes and related NCDs remain disproportionately underfunded, the United Natio...

This article looks at the available data on economic growth and various social indicators-including health outcomes and education-and compares the past 25 years (1980-2005 or latest available year) with the prior two decades (1960-1980). The past 25 years have seen a sharp slowdown in the rate of economic growth for the vast majority of low- and middle-income countries. For the health indicator...

INTRODUCTION While previous research already exists on the impact of the current economic crisis and whether it leads to an increase in mortality by suicide, our objective in this paper is to determine if the increase in the suicide rate in Catalonia, Spain from 2010 onwards has been statistically significant and whether it is associated with rising unemployment. METHODS We used hierarchical ...

Empirical findings for a panel of around 100 countries from 1960 to 1990 strongly support the general notion of conditional convergence. For a given starting level of real per capita GDP, the growth rate is enhanced by higher initial schooling and life expectancy, lower fertility, lower government consumption, better maintenance of the rule of law, lower inflation, and improvements in the terms...

The effect of socio-economic disadvantage on mortality is well documented and differences exist even at older ages. However, whether this translates into differences in the quality of life lived at older ages is less well studied, and in particular in the proportion of remaining life spent without ill health (healthy life expectancy), a key UK Government target. Although there have been studies...