Our article draws on two multi-sited studies to present the ethical and methodological challenges of conducting online qualitative research among vulnerable populations in the Philippines—specifically, among people who use drugs—during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the global scholarship has long articulated the difficulties inherent to pursuing research on such populations, we show how the specific milieu of the Philippines in the last three years has created exceptional, structural challenges to the conduct of said research. Besides the inevitable ...

Introduction: Previous studies exploring associations of physical inactivity, obesity, and out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) mainly used traditional linear regression, and little is known about the effect of both physical inactivity and obesity on OOPE across the percentile distribution. This study aims to assess the effects of physical inactivity and obesity on OOPE in China using a quantile regression approach. Methods: Study participants included 10,687 respondents aged 45 years and older from the recent wave of the China Health and Retirement ...

Background: Physical inactivity and sedentary behavior are significant risk factors for various non-communicable diseases. Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, is one of the fastest-growing metropolitans in Southeast Asia. Few studies have investigated the epidemiology of physical activity and sedentary behavior among Bangkok residents. This study aims to investigate the prevalence of combined physical activity and sedentary behavior patterns among Bangkok residents and examine relationships between participants’ characteristics and the combined ...

The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has threatened health and well-being in all populations. This impact is also deepening structural inequalities for migrant workers in Thailand. Due to their vulnerability and limited opportunity to access health services, they have greater risks in many health aspects compared to other populations. This qualitative study sought to examine the key health concerns and barriers during the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare access among migrant workers in Thailand through the lens of policymakers, ...

Social factors, signals, and biases shape the health of our nation. Racism and poverty manifest in unequal social, environmental, and economic conditions, resulting in deep-rooted health disparities that carry over from generation to generation. In Perspectives on Health Equity and Social Determinants of Health, authors call for collective action across sectors to reverse the debilitating and often lethal consequences of health inequity. This edited volume of discussion papers provides recommendations to advance the agenda to promote health ...

Problem: The challenge of implementing contributory health insurance among populations in the informal sector was a barrier to achieving universal health coverage (UHC) in Thailand. Approach: UHC was a political manifesto of the 2001 election campaign. A contributory system was not a feasible option to honour the political commitment. Given Thailand’s fiscal capacity and the moderate amount of additional resources required, the government legislated to use general taxation as the sole source of financing for the universal coverage ...

The international consensus to end compulsory drug treatments and close forced rehabilitation facilities needs urgent transformation to country policies. In the Philippines, as with other countries in Asia, rehabilitation can be compulsory and is seen as the humane alternative to the “war on drugs.” In this paper, we present the landscape of rehabilitation and narrate the ways in which people who use drugs are forced to undergo treatment. We unpack the politics behind rehabilitation and explain the sociocultural foundations that support compulsory ...

Population aging has significant economic and social costs, and this paper studies its impacts on inequality, both theoretically and empirically. First, we build a two-period overlapping-generation model with an uncertain lifetime and find that population aging has the overall effect of increasing income and consumption inequality within the society. For the empirical analysis, we use household data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey to assess the age effect on income and consumption inequality in the People’s Republic of China and confirm ...

Depression is the most common form of mental disorder among prison inmates. The objective of this study is to determine the prevalence and socio-demographic determinants of depression among adult male inmates in a local prison in Malaysia. This cross-sectional study was conducted among 460 inmates who were systematically selected. Depression was screened using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale. Chi-square tests and multiple logistic regression were applied to determine the association between depression and associated ...