Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development

This endeavour to generate awareness of, and research on, issues of poverty and human development drew on a collaborative effort involving the participation of 237 journals from 37 developed and developing countries around the world. The 750 articles that were published as a result of this cooperation represent all regions of the world, and include 112 specific countries.

Both the internet and face-to-face communication were used to bring this information to a broader audience. First, many of the articles in the special issue are freely available online. In addition, 8 of the articles were selected by a panel of National Institutes of Health (NIH) and CSE experts for presentation at an event held on October 22 2007 in the United States (click here to access a web cast). New research in these articles examines interventions and projects to improve health and reduce health-care inequities among the economically poor, focusing on subject areas such as childbirth safety, HIV/AIDS, malaria treatment, food insufficiency and sexual behaviour, interventions to improve child survival, physician "brain drain" from the developing world, influenza's impact on children, and use of satellite technology to predict disease outbreaks.

For example, one article presented at the event shares research out of Botswana and Swaziland that showed that, after controlling for respondent characteristics, women in both countries who reported food insufficiency were nearly twice as likely to have used condoms inconsistently with a non-regular partner. They were also found to be more likely to have sold sex or become sexually involved with men of a different generation. These findings, the authors of the study note, have implications for those seeking to implement HIV prevention interventions in these (and other economically poor) countries.

Poverty.

There have been 2 previous global theme issues, both organised by the editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). In January 1996, more than 200 articles on Emerging and Reemerging Global Microbial Threats were published by 36 journals from 21 countries, and, in 1997, 97 journals in 31 countries simultaneously explored the theme of ageing.