Public Health in Azerbaijan: On the Road with AJN Contributing Editor Jane Salvage

Jane Salvage in Baku, Azerbaijan

We recently received the following account of a visit to Azerbaijan from AJN contributing editor Jane Salvage, MSc, BA, RGN. At the time of writing, Salvage was a consultant for the noncommunicable diseases programme, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe. She now works as the policy lead in the support team for the Prime Minister’s Commission on the Future of Nursing and Midwifery in England, and fears that seeing Baku in the springtime will have to wait a year or two. This post is fairly long, but we feel the range of local detail included by Salvage gives a fascinating glimpse into what it’s really like to work in the field of international public health policy. (Note: we’ve retained some UK-style spellings.)

Did I pack the toilet rolls, diarrhoea pills, and dollar bills? These are essential survival items for my trips to Russia and other former Eastern Bloc countries. I’ve added many things to my travel checklist since my first visits in the 1980s—gadgets like the computer and phone charger—but the core kit stays the same. I never know quite […]
2016-11-21T13:36:18-05:00April 6th, 2009|Nursing, Public health|2 Comments
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Marketing Osteoporosis: How a Risk Factor Becomes a Disease—and Health Care Costs Continue to Rise

Photo by kyz / Stuart Caie via Flickr.

“In the name of prevention, millions of Americans have accepted the idea that it’s reasonable to treat a risk factor such as bone loss or high cholesterol as if it were a disease,” writes Maryann Napoli, associate director of the Center for Medical Consumers, in her April AJN article, “Marketing Osteoporosis.” […]

2016-11-21T13:36:27-05:00April 3rd, 2009|health care policy, nursing research|0 Comments
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Who’s a Nurse? The Leech Test at AJN

"Leech dance," by Thejaswswi, from Flickr.

The editorial staff of AJN includes both RNs and non-nurses. You can always tell who the RNs are by their reaction to photos of ugly wounds. The nurses love them and some of the non-nurses don’t even want to look at the photos. Case in point: the April CE article on leeches for wound healing. I think the photos are great. But many of the non-nurses find them disgusting. Are nurses simply sensitized to looking at ghastly images of wounds and abnormalities? Or do those who become nurses have a different sensibility? As a teenager, I used to love to babysit the children of a physician. After the kids were in bed, I’d comb through his medical library in search of the odd and gruesome images. I found them fascinating. I look forward to the New England Journal of Medicine each week and turn first to the Images in Clinical Medicine. A bit weird, I suppose. Or is it?

–Diana J. Mason, RN, AJN editor-in-chief emeritus

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2016-11-21T13:36:36-05:00April 2nd, 2009|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Can the Recession Be Good for the Country’s Health?

Photo by Nesster / Jussi You-S-See via Flickr

Anyone who knows me will tell you: I am not what you would call an optimist. And looking for the silver lining during times like this is hard for anybody. The recession has been stressful for many people. This kind of stress can lead to increased anxiety and depression as well as loss of sleep, increased smoking and drinking, and stress on personal relationships. Yet I can’t help but see some positive effects of the recession. […]

2016-11-21T13:36:40-05:00April 1st, 2009|Nursing|2 Comments
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Propose Our Next Poll Question

What kinds of poll questions would you like us to ask? Our first one (still active) was about nursing and the economy. Too boring? Too depressing? Too obvious? What kinds of questions matter to you? We’d like to know.

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2009-03-31T13:53:03-04:00March 31st, 2009|Nursing|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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