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In many long-enduring coastal cultures, there are stories – sometimes mythologized – about times when pieces of land became separated from mainlands by submergence, a process that created islands where none existed before. Using examples from northwest Europe and Australia, this paper argues that many such stories recall times, often millennia ago, when sea level in the aftermath of the Last Glaciation (last ice age) was rising and transforming coastal landscapes and their human uses in exactly the ways these stories describe. The possibility that these may have arisen from eyewitness accounts of these transformative processes, hitherto thought to be understandable only by scientific (palaeoenvironmental) reconstructions, should encourage more systematic investigations of such stories by scientists. It also suggests that science has traditionally underestimated the capacity of oral (pre-literate) cultures to acquire, encode and sustain their observations of memorable events with a high degree of replication fidelity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Using the concept of avoidable mortality, international studies suggest that healthcare has been effective in reducing mortality. This paper provides an analysis of avoidable mortality in Australia and compares trends with those of Western Europe. Methods: Using unit-record mortality data, we calculated avoidable mortality rates in Australia for 1968-2001. We partitioned avoidable causes into three categories: those amenable to medical care; those mainly responsive to health policy; and ischaemic heart disease. We used Poisson regression to model the trends. We compared trends with those of nine European countries using published data. Results: Total avoidable death rates fell by 68% in females and 72% in males. The corresponding non-avoidable death rates fell by 35 and 33%. The annual declines in avoidable mortality rates were: 3.47% [95% confidence intervals (CI) 3.44-3.50%] in males and 3.89% (95% CI 3.86-3.91%) in females. For non-avoidable mortality rates, the annual declines were 1.09% (95% CI 1.05-1.13%) and 0.95% (95% CI 0.92-0.98%), respectively. In females, declines in death rates from causes amenable to medical care contributed 54% to the decline in avoidable mortality rates, ischaemic heart disease contributed 45%, and causes responsive to health policy intervention contributed 1%. In males, the corresponding contributions were 32, 57 and 11%. These rates, and the declines between 1980 and 1998, were comparable with selected European countries, with Australia's ranking improving over the period. Conclusion: Trends in avoidable mortality in Australia suggest that the Australian healthcare system has been effective in improving population health. Australia's experience compares favourably with that of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) remain a major challenge in the 21st century. High-income countries (HICs) populations are ethnically and culturally diverse due to international migration. Evidence suggests that NCDs rates differ between migrants and the host populations in HICs. This paper presents a review of NCDs burden among migrant groups in HICs in Europe, North America and Australia with a major focus on cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), cancer and diabetes.Methods: We performed a narrative review consisting of scholarly papers published between 1960 until 2018.Results: CVD risk differs by country of origin, country of destination and duration of residence. For example, stroke is more common in sub-Sahara African and South-Asian migrants, but lower in North African and Chinese migrants. Chinese migrants, however, have a higher risk of haemorrhagic stroke despite the lower rate of overall stroke. Coronary heart disease (CHD) is more common in South-Asian migrants, but less common in sub-Saharan and north African migrants although the lower risk of CHD in these population is waning. Diabetes risk is higher in all migrants and migrants seem to develop diabetes at an earlier age than the host populations. Migrants in general have lower rates of overall cancer morbidity and mortality than the host populations in Europe. However, migrants have a higher infectious disease-related cancers than the host populations in Europe. In North America, the picture is more complex. Data from cross-national comparisons indicate that migration-related lifestyle changes associated with the lifestyle of the host population in the country of settlement may influence NCDs risk among migrants in a very significant way.Conclusion: With exception of diabetes, which is consistently higher in all migrant groups than in the host populations, the burden of NCDs among migrants seems to depend on the migrant group, country of settlement and NCD type. This suggests that more work is needed to disentangle the key migration-related lifestyle changes and contextual factors that may be driving the differential risk of NCDs among migrants in order to assist prevention and clinical management of NCDs in these populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]