Vishal Bhavsar
Our study, published recently in the IJE, looks at the relationship between experience of violence, in the form of physical assault in the previous 12 months, and premature mortality in a sample of working-age Russian men living in Izhevsk in the Southern Urals.
We did this study because, although violence is considered important at a policy and political level, empirical public health research on the subject is patchy. There has been quite a lot of research on the relationship between violence exposure and later mental health problems, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder, and more generally the impact of violence on coping and psychological characteristics, particularly in children. Recently, there has been considerable work on the descriptive epidemiology of violence against women, both from a general population perspective and in studies focusing on women with serious mental illness.
In contrast, we found that population-based research on the physical health effects of exposure to violence was limited, and we decided to focus on possible associations between assault and mortality in our study.
Mika Ala-Korpela and George Davey Smith
When Michael Bloomberg was elected Mayor of New York City (NYC), he set forth an ambitious agenda to efficiently sync municipal agencies. Improving New Yorkers’ health was part of his motivation. For example, expanding parks and bike lanes would not only improve people’s quality of life and expand transportation options, their presence would also encourage healthy behaviours. So, why not create cross-agency agendas that allow parks with bike lanes to be created on city streets? Innovative thinkers were hired and were given an unusual amount of political capital and logistical support to implement their plans.
IJEblog 