World Cities Project: New York, Paris, London, Tokyo Fact Sheet

The World Cities Project (WCP) originated as a joint research project between the International Longevity Center-USA and New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. It has since grown to include the active involvement of the ILC-France, ILC-Japan, and ILC-UK. Also the City of Paris Department of Health and Social Affairs, the London Regional Office of the British National Health Service, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Bureau of Health and Social Welfare, and the New York City Department of Aging and Department of Health have provided important support to the project. The project compares health, social services, and quality of life for persons aged 65 and over in the four largest urban agglomerations in the countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): New York, Paris, Tokyo and London.Although these four cities have been the subject of numerous studies in the fields of architecture and urban planning, there have been few comparative studies of health and social services. Additionally, the WCP introduces a spatial perspective to more conventional economic and demographic analyses of population aging and longevity issues. Most comparative analyses of health systems focus on national averages that mask important variations within smaller jurisdictions. In contrast, the WCP relates smaller, more comparable units providing notable advantages for cross-national learning

Cities and Health: A Response to the Recent Commentaries

We are grateful to our many colleagues who took the time to respond to our analysis of Shanghai’s declining “avoidable mortality.”1 The range of their perspectives across 5 recent commentaries reassures us that the topic is worthy of sustained study. Indeed, the presumption behind our comparative research on healthcare in world cities 2 is that the city is a strategic unit of analysis for understanding the health sector and that world cities share a host of important characteristics

Reduce Avoidable Hospitalisations: A Policy to Increase Value from Health Care Expenditures

An interdisciplinary examination of rates of avoidable hospitalizations in France and England to evaluate access to primary care and identify the extent to which these countries may be able to reduce hospital costs by investing in disease management and primary care

Needed: Global Collaboration for Comparative Research on Cities and Health

Over half of the world’s population lives in cities and United Nations (UN) demographers project an increase of 2.5 billion more urban dwellers by 2050. Yet there is too little systematic comparative research on the practice of urban health policy and management (HPAM), particularly in the megacities of middle-income and developing nations. We make a case for creating a global database on cities, population health and healthcare systems. The expenses involved in data collection would be difficult to justify without some review of previous work, some agreement on indicators worth measuring, conceptual and methodological considerations to guide the construction of the global database, and a set of research questions and hypotheses to test. We, therefore, address these issues in a manner that we hope will stimulate further discussion and collaboration

Shanghai rising: health improvements as measured by avoidable mortality since 2000

Over the past two decades, Shanghai, the largest megacity in China, has been coping with unprecedented growth of its economy and population while overcoming previous underinvestment in the health system by the central and local governments. We study the evolution of Shanghai’s healthcare system by analyzing “Avoidable Mortality” (AM) – deaths amenable to public health and healthcare interventions, as previously defined in the literature. Based on analysis of mortality data, by cause of death, from the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, we analyze trends over the period 2000–10 and compare Shanghai’s experience to other mega-city regions – New York, London and Paris. Population health status attributable to public health and healthcare interventions improved dramatically for Shanghai’s population with permanent residency status. The age-adjusted rate of AM, per 1,000 population, dropped from 0.72 to 0.50. The rate of decrease in age-adjusted AM in Shanghai (30%) was comparable to New York City (30%) and Paris (25%), but lower than London (42%). Shanghai’s establishment of the Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention and its upgrading of public health and health services are likely to have contributed to the large decrease in the number and rate of avoidable deaths, which suggests that investments in public health infrastructure and increasing access to health services in megacities – both in China and worldwide – can produce significant mortality declines. Future analysis in Shanghai should investigate inequalities in avoidable deaths and the extent to which these gains have benefitted the significant population of urban migrants who do not have permanent residency status

RIVESTIMENTI ANTI-CORROSIVI DI ALLUMINA DEPOSITATI MEDIANTE LETTO FLUIDO

In questo articolo vengono illustrati i risultati di prove di resistenza alla corrosione eseguite su campioni di alluminio AA 6082 T6 rivestiti con un film di Al2O3 depositato mediante letto fluido. Sono state preparate 4 serie di provini con diversi tempi di deposizione (tra 30 e 240 minuti). Le prove di corrosione sono state eseguite mediante Spettroscopia di Impedenza Elettrochimica (EIS), Rumore Elettrochimico (ENA) e Impedenza Elettrochimica Localizzata (LEIS). I risultati hanno evidenziato una migliore resistenza alla corrosione dei campioni trattati fino a 120 minuti, mentre prestazioni più scadenti sono state registrate per i campioni sottoposti a tempi di deposizione superiori

Chacterization of CU tube filled with Al alloy foam by means of X-ray computer tomography

Copper tubes filled with aluminium foams were prepared by directly foaming metal powder compacts inside them. Compressive behaviour and foam-shell interface, that characterizes mechanical properties of reinforced tubes, were investigated by means of variable focus X-ray computer tomography. Compression tests were performed on empty and filled samples at increasing deformation steps: at each stage the samples were observed by tomography. A geometric evaluation of porosity on 2D sections was performed by calculating, for each pore, its area, equivalent diameter and circularity

Public health and medical care for the world's factory: China's Pearl River Delta Region

While the growth of urbanization, worldwide, has improved the lives of migrants from the hinterland, it also raises health risks related to population density, concentrated poverty and the transmission of infectious disease. Will megacity regions evolve into socially infected breeding grounds for the rapid transmission of disease, or can they become critical spatial entities for the protection and promotion of population health? We address this question for the Pearl River Delta Region (PRD) based on recent data from Chinese sources, and on the experience of how New York, Greater London, Tokyo and Paris have grappled with the challenges of protecting population health and providing their populations with access to health care services. In some respects, there are some important lessons from comparative experience for PRD, notably the importance of covering the entire population for health care services and targeting special programs for those at highest risk for disease. In other respects, PRD's growth rate and sheer scale make it a unique megacity region that already faces new challenges and will require new solutions

Nephronophthisis

Nephronophthisis (NPH) is an autosomal recessive disease characterized by a chronic tubulointerstitial nephritis that progress to terminal renal failure during the second decade (juvenile form) or before the age of 5 years (infantile form). In the juvenile form, a urine concentration defect starts during the first decade, and a progressive deterioration of renal function is observed in the following years. Kidney size may be normal, but loss of corticomedullary differentiation is often observed, and cysts occur usually after patients have progressed to end-stage renal failure. Histologic lesions are characterized by tubular basement membrane anomalies, tubular atrophy, and interstitial fibrosis. The infantile form is characterized by cortical microcysts and progression to end-stage renal failure before 5 years of age. Some children present with extrarenal symptoms: retinitis pigmentosa (Senior-Løken syndrome), mental retardation, cerebellar ataxia, bone anomalies, or liver fibrosis. Positional cloning and candidate gene approaches led to the identification of eight causative genes (NPHP1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) responsible for the juvenile NPH and one gene NPHP2 for the infantile form. NPH and associated disorders are considered as ciliopathies, as all NPHP gene products are expressed in the primary cilia, similarly to the polycystic kidney disease (PKD) proteins