Health Care, Telemedicine and RAIN Network

RAIN Community Internet has worked to ensure new technology and new resources to every part of the community. RAIN's Education Network has taught over 25,000 K-12 public school students, trained over 900 teachers and created Distance Learning Programs for over 150 rural communities in California and the Southwest. In all of the rural communities RAIN works with Community Technology Advisory Councils (CTAC) have been created to involve rural area residents in the process of bringing new technology and resources to their communities. Each of those communities have also had Youth Technology Advisory Councils (YTAC's) creted to involve youth directly in the process of bringing Internet Technology to their home community.

RAIN's Central California Telemedicine Network has trained physicians and nurses in rural and urban communities throughout the western U.S. and has provided the Framework for projects in Belize, Ghana, Costa Rica and other developing regions.

Current Telemedicine Projects at RAIN Network are at:

http://www.rain.org/dlt/health.html
http://www.rain.org/littlesteps
http://www.rain.org/vide-magazine
http://www.rain.org/dlt/wellness/

Integrating Social Justice and Health Care has always been a primary focus of our work. The following is a recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the issue of Social Justice and Health.

Social factors - rather than genetics - are to blame for huge variations in ill health and life expectancy around the world, a report concludes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has carried out a three-year analysis of the "social determinants" of health.

The report concludes "social injustice is killing people on a grand scale".
For instance, a boy living in the deprived Glasgow suburb of Calton will live on average 28 years less than a boy born in nearby affluent Lenzie.

The average life expectancy in London's wealthy Hampstead was 11 years longer than in nearby St Pancras.

The research also shows that a girl in the African country of Lesotho is, on average, likely to live 42 years less than a girl in Japan.

People need the opportunity, the possibility, to take control of their lives - but the conditions need to be right to allow them to do that

In Sweden, the risk of a woman dying during pregnancy and childbirth is one in 17,400, but in Afghanistan the odds are one in eight.

The report, drawn up by an eminent panel of experts forming the WHO's Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, found that, in almost all countries, poor socioeconomic circumstances equated to poor health.

The differences were so marked that genetics and biology could not begin to explain them.

Toxic combination
The authors write: "(The) toxic combination of bad policies, economics, and politics is, in large measure responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible."

The report calls for governments to consider how all their policies impact on health. It says that it is entirely possible to reduce health inequality within a relatively short period of time.

But it warns that, without action, injustice and inequality will only increase.
Sir Michael Marmot, chairman of the commission said : "There are examples where health inequalities have narrowed but, in too many cases, we have seen a widening.
"But that means the magnitude of inequalities is flexible - if the gap can widen, it can get narrower."

He said: "The key message of our report is that the circumstances in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age are the fundamental drivers of health, and health inequity."
"We rely too much on medical interventions as a way of increasing life expectancy."

"A more effective way of increasing life expectancy and improving health would be for every government policy and programme to be assessed for its impact on health and health equity; to make health and health equity a marker for government performance."

"People need the opportunity, the possibility, to take control of their lives - but the conditions need to be right to allow them to do that."

The report highlights education, affordable housing, management of access to unhealthy foods and social security protection as key.

It also said that governments should take action to ensure a living wage for workers, and working conditions that reduce work-related stress and ensure a healthy work-life balance.