Category Archives: Complexity

Burning money?

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Burning

Fuel poverty and health campaigners today called on the newly launched Public Health England to address the devastating impact of cold homes on the health of the nation.

Campaigners welcomed the shift in responsibility for public health to local authorities and the opportunity this creates to address a major root cause of health problems in the UK – the woeful levels of insulation in the nation’s homes.

Mostly as a result of poor insulation levels, fuel poverty now affects over 5 million households in the UK. Living in cold homes doubles the likelihood of a respiratory illness such as asthma in children and quadruples the risk of mental health problems for teenagers. Fuel poverty is estimated to cost the NHS over £1bn every year.

The Energy Bill Revolution campaign estimates that on average over 7,000 people die every year from living in cold homes.  The big freeze that has affected the UK in recent weeks almost certainly means that more people have died because they cannot keep their homes warm.

The Energy Bill Revolution is calling for carbon tax to be used to fund an ambitious energy efficiency programme to super-insulate the homes of the fuel poor. The Government will collect over £60 billion in carbon tax over the next 15 years which is enough to make every fuel poor home highly energy efficient and slash their energy bill by over £300 ever year.

Carbon Tax can provide a massive financial boost for Public Health England and local authorities to support the delivery of such a programme.  This would help improve the health of some of the UK’s most vulnerable citizens, keeping them out of hospital and easing the burden on the NHS.

The Department of Health’s new ‘Public Health Outcomes Framework for England, 2013-2016’ identifies reducing fuel poverty as one of its key indicators for addressing the wider determinants of heath. Reducing mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and excess winter deaths are also identified as indicators against which the whole public health system should deliver improvements. It is vital that local authorities, in partnership with health and well-being boards, prioritise these indicators in local strategies if they are to fulfil their responsibilities to protect the health of their local population.

 Jo Butcher, Public Health Adviser for Friends of the Earth, said:

“As energy bills continue to soar and another cold snap hits the UK, millions of fuel poor households face difficult ‘heat or eat’ choices. It is a national disgrace that so many die each year due to cold, damp and poorly insulated housing. Public Health England must prioritise action to tackle fuel poverty and the Government must use carbon tax to fund a much bigger programme to insulate UK homes. Energy efficiency is commonly perceived to be the domain of the environment sector but I hope the new public health service will demonstrate it has a central role to play. The transfer of public health to local authorities is good news – they are used to managing housing and environmental health issues and are well placed to bring together the range of services that need to be involved in tackling the cold homes crisis.”

Jane Landon, Deputy Chief Executive at the National Heart Forum, commented:

“Cold, damp homes are responsible for avoidable deaths and needless health problems for many people in this country. The Government has committed to reducing avoidable mortality and action to tackle fuel poverty and its effects must be a priority to help achieve this. We welcome the establishment of Public Health England. Its role in the delivery of public health nationally and locally and its focus on reducing inequalities is a new opportunity to tackle fuel poverty.”

Energy Bill Revolution, the largest fuel poverty alliance ever assembled, is backed by 120 organisations representing the children’s, health, environmental, housing, disability and consumer sectors, businesses, academia, politicians, local councils and the public. The Energy Bill Revolution is asking Government to recycle the substantial funds it receives from carbon tax revenues (an average of £4bn annually over the next 15 years) into energy efficiency programmes to eradicate fuel poverty www.energybillrevolution.org

A quick example of thinslicing – to find the data and to act on the data

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1. Consider this excerpt from Wikipedia on the Friendship paradox, as way of a quick mathematical -based example of ‘thinslicing’, that helps predict disease epidemics:

The analysis of the friendship paradox implies that the friends of randomly selected individuals are likely to have higher than average centrality. This observation has been used as a way to forecast and slow the course of epidemics, by using this random selection process to choose individuals to immunize or monitor for infection while avoiding the need for a complex computation of the centrality of all nodes in the network.[5][6][7]

2. Then consider that this is probably what happened in one New York community, prior to the full impact of HIV, to quote one study from Dr Sam Friedman:

In the period from 1976 to the early 1980’s, seroprevalence in New York rose from zero to about 50%…The epidemic then entered a period of dynamic stabilization…Although mathematical models have suggested network saturation may have been an important part of the stabilization process (Blower, 1991), the sociometric analysis of drug injectors’ networks conducted during the research for this volume suggest that the extent of network saturation may have been quite limited.

Behaviour change probably made a major contribution to the stabilization of seroprevalence. In spite of a popular image that would suggest that either “slavery to their addiction” or “hedonistic, selfish personalities that ignore risks and social responsibility,” drug injectors in New York (and indeed, throughout the world) have acted both to protect themselves and others against the AIDS epidemic. Thus, by 1984, before there were any programs other than the mass media to inform them about AIDS or to help to protect themselves, drug injectors in New York were engaged in widespread risk reduction…Furthermore, observations on the street confirmed this by showing that drug dealers were competing with others for business by offering free sterile syringes along with their drugs as AIDS-prevention techniques.

BTW if you’ve stumbled on this post and wonder what it all means, join the club. I am still working on myself, but there’s something here about ‘thinslicing’ as an outsider – in this example finding who to immunize in an epidemic; and ‘thinslicing’ from an insider perspective, in this example, who with little information people figured out how to take precautionary measures.Hence the title addition – to find the data and to act on the data..