Faculty Bibliography

Although a stated right for all Indians, equal access to health care in India is impeded by socioeconomic barriers. With its 3-tier system of public health care centers in villages, district hospitals, and tertiary care hospitals, government expenditure in India is inordinately low, with a disproportionate emphasis on private health spending. Accordingly, the poorest receive a minority of the available subsidies, whereas the richest obtain more than a third, fostering a divide in health care infrastructure across the rich and poor in urban and rural settings. This paradigm has implications for domestic Indian public health and global public health.

The Russian Federation health system has its roots in the country's complex political history. The Ministry of Health and Social Development and its associated federal services are the principal Russian institutions subserving the Russian Federation. Funding for the health system goes through 2 channels: the general revenue budget managed by federal, regional, and local health authorities, and the Mandatory Health Insurance Fund. Although the Soviet Union was the first country in the world to guarantee free medical care as a constitutional right to all its citizens, quality and accessibility are in question.

A network of family-based community-oriented primary health programs, or Programa Agentes Communita rios de Saude, and family health programs, or Programa Saude da Familia, introduced almost 2 decades ago were the Brazilian government's health care models to restructure primary care under the Unified Health System, or Sistema Unico de Saude. The latter offers comprehensive coverage to all, although it is used by those of lower income, and despite achievement in the last quarter century, access to health services and gradients of health status continue to persist along income, educational background, racial, and religious lines.

Metrics are an important part of the assessment of public health. They include traditional measures of mortality and newly described summary measures to describe the disability engendered by diseases. Epidemiology has transformed the understanding of risk factors for disease; however, a holistic approach includes recognition of social determinants and the neighborhood and communities where the people most at risk reside.

The global burden of adult neuropsychiatric illness and childhood mental disorders is enormous, accounting for a significant burden of disability in adults and a major factor of overall health that continues throughout the lifespan of children and into adulthood.

The role of vaccination in the control and prevention of endemic and emerging diseases cannot be overemphasized. Induction of host protective immunity may be the most powerful tool and effective strategy in preventing the spread of potentially fatal disease and emerging illnesses, in particular in susceptible immunologically naive hosts. The strategy for vaccination programs is engrained in population studies recognizing benefit for the health and economic welfare of at-risk indigenous populations. Worldwide collaboration is a necessary aspect of vaccine-preventable diseases recognizing that even a small number of wild-type cases of an eradicated disease in one region presents opportunities for re-emergence of the disease in geographically remote areas.

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states and in specified populations and the application to control health problems. Classified as either descriptive or analytical, a variety of epidemiologic approaches can be used to allow assessment of hypothesized risk factor exposure with disease outcomes. This article reviews salient aspects of epidemiologic research methods that are used repeatedly in articles in this volume on public health, neuroepidemiology, and health systems.

Ischemic stroke is a heterogeneous multifactorial disorder recognized by the sudden onset of neurologic signs related directly to the sites of injury in the brain where the morbid process occurs. The evaluation of complex neurologic disorders, such as stroke, in which multiple genetic and epigenetic factors interact with environmental risk factors to increase the risk has been revolutionized by the genome-wide association studies (GWAS) approach. This article reviews salient aspects of ischemic stroke emphasizing the impact of neuroepidemiology and GWAS.

The epidemiology of multiple sclerosis (MS) includes a consideration of genetic and environmental factors. Comparative studies of different populations have revealed prevalence and incidence rates that vary with geography and ethnicity. With a prevalence ranging from 2 per 100,000 in Japan to greater than 100 per 100,000 in Northern Europe and North America, the burden of MS is similarly unevenly influenced by longevity and comorbid disorders. Well-powered genome-wide association studies have investigated the genetic substrate of MS, providing insight into autoimmune mechanisms involved in the etiopathogenesis of MS and elucidating possible avenues of biological treatment.

The epidemiology of vasculitis has witnessed extraordinary advances in the past decade influenced by the worldwide increased recognition and accurate classification and diagnosis of the vasculitides, and insights brought by genome-wide association studies and other genetic investigations that contribute to the understanding of the heritable factors of some of the disorders. This article reviews the current knowledge of the epidemiology of vasculitides in different global regions.