The Standing Committee On Public Health

The Standing Committee On Public Health (SCOPH) has been the organ of IFMSA that deals with Public Health issues since IFMSA’s earliest days.

Being IFMSA's largest Standing Committee, SCOPH includes an immense number of project and activities on various issues. These include tobacco, malaria, tuberculosis, obesity & lifestyle, mental health, children’s activities, organ donation, drug abuse, road safety, alcohol, women’s health, the environment and many more!

SCOPH prides itself on a strong ‘family spirit’ of infectious motivation and dedication among its members throughout the world, whose ultimate goal is to improve health for all on this small planet!

At the moment, a lot of SCOPH material is also available at the SCOPH-Intranet site:

www.mayeticvillage.com/QuickPlace/ifmsa-scoph/Main.nsf

Mission

Improving public health globally for a healthier tomorrow.

Goals

- Raise Awareness among medical students, health professionals and the community on public health issues around the world

- Educate and Train medical students to play their role in improving public health

- Ensure continuity and sustainability of SCOPH projects and activities

- Work as an international Team to make a difference!

International Activities:

• Ageing
• Tobacco
• Tuberculosis
• Malaria
• Children's activities
• Mental Health

Activities on a National Level:

• TBH
• EQUIP
• Hunger Lunch

Projects:

• IFMSA Village Concept Projects
• NMO Projects with possibility of student participation

• Projects & Activities in Public Health
• Mental Health - ONE STEP FORWARD TO A GLOBAL SMILE
• Anti Tobaco
• Hunger Lunch
• Mailing Lists

400 million in the world suffer from mental disorders. Only 25% of them are referred to health services and only 10% of them receive adequate treatment. 10-20 million attend and 1 million people complete suicide every year. Above all, 5 of the 10 diseases causing disability are mental disorders.

A precise understanding of the phenomenon by the authorities and raising awareness among public is critical for mental disorders to be taken under control.

Mental disorders have multiple impacts of social, biological, and psychological determinants. They are expected responses to serious or chronicle physical disease, as well as to war and trauma, but also to adverse social conditions such as high unemployment, limited education, discrimination and poverty.

Beyond the striking statistics related to suffering from defined mental disorders, there are many categories of people who, because of extremely difficult circumstances, are at special risk of being affected by mental problems. Amongst them are persons living in extreme poverty, such as slum-dwellers; children and adolescents experiencing disrupted nurturing, abused women, abandoned elderly people, others traumatised by violence, such as the victims of armed conflicts, migrants, including refugees and many indigenous persons.

The most common mental disorders are mood disorders (major depression-unipolar, manic depression-bipolar), anxiety disorders, alcohol related diseases, and schizophrenia.

Depression, the most prevalent and commonly undiagnosed disorder which leads the 340 million affected individuals with prominent psychomotor retardation and anhedonia from those who evidence psychomotor activation, guilt, anxiety, and occasionally, delusional thinking. The severity of the somatic symptoms increase along with the severity of depression. Another importance of major depression is that it is linked closely with suicide, since most persons who attempt suicide are also clinically depressed.

Anxiety Disorders including panic disorders, agoraphobia, social phobia, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder lead the individuals to significant distress and dysfunction due to an unpleasant emotional state, fear. The median age for anxiety disorders is just 15 years.

More than half of the 45 million people affected by schizophrenia are not receiving appropriate care. A psychotic patient in general shows himself with a grossly impaired sense of reality, often coupled with emotional and cognitive disabilities, which severely compromises his ability to function. Schizophrenia can be treated if diagnosed early. 90% of people with untreated schizophrenia can be provided at community level with affective family and community involvement.

Alcohol is the major substance of abuse and causes related problems to 288 million people such as impaired social and occupational functioning.

All indications show that the future will bring a dramatic increase in mental health problem. It is a crises of the 21st century. In order to avoid this rapidly growing problem, we should work altogether to increase the awareness of the community and to educate it about mental health, reorganize mental health services, create community mental health services and outreach programs, train of primary care providers, train psychiatrists, and provide psycho-social rehabilitation.

Let's contribute to a global smile that will lead us to mental well-being.
 

Esra Genisol - esragenisolhotmailcom

Anti Tobacco

Anti Tobacco is one of the biggest working groups within the SCOPH. Many of its activities take place around the 31st of May which is the World No Tobacco Day.

With this, we are aiming to raise the awareness of university students, doctors and everyone also of

• the dangers to oneself and others,
• their role modelling position and also
• the marketing strategies of the Tobacco Industry including their influence in Governments, Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) and Industry.
• Also we want to provide help to the "going to be non-smokers".

Benoit Raeckelboom

Hunger Lunch is a program I started at Chapel Hill School of Medicine 2 years ago. As we have had a lot of success I am trying to expand the program to other medical schools. The concept is simple: diners give a small donation for a simple meal and the profits go toward helping 3rd world hunger. At UNC, the hospital cafeteria cooks rice, beans, and cornbread, sells it to us at cost (about 50 cents per plate) and medical students sell the food, all you can eat, for $2. We do this twice per month. Last year we raised over $2000 with $1600 profit that was used to build and stock a chicken coop at an orphanage in Nicaragua. The children went from eating only rice and beans to include eggs every day in only one week. The chickens even lay enough eggs to be sold in town which makes the project sustainable as this extra money will be used to upkeep the coop, stock feed and buy more chickens next year. This is the perfect example of doing a project at a local level and directly seeing results in a developing community. The best part- it's so easy to do. Many people in the food industry are sympathetic to the hunger problem worldwide and are eager to help with cooking the food. Medical students too, want to help- especially since the Hunger Lunch program is designed to let each school decide on a hunger related program to benefit. Finally, by selling staple lunches such as rice and beans, we raise awareness of hunger worldwide. Diners get a taste of what lunch is like in so many countries. Displaying pictures of past projects supported with Hunger Lunch profits or of the community the current funds will benefit give people a connection to the developing world (they may even donate extra money).

Hunger Lunch works especially well for medical students wanting to carry out a health/hunger project abroad as they can bring with them the money to oversee the chosen project. Please look over the following materials and contact me with any questions. I am happy to help you get started. If you have friends at other schools you think may be interested in Hunger Lunch, please forward me their name and address so I can send them material as well. I look forward to hearing from you.

Kelly Fogleman, UNC and Chapel Hill School of Medicine

kelly_foglemanmed.uncedu

If you would like to be informed about IFMSA's Public Health activities, please subscribe to SCOPH mailing list.

If you have any questions about the SCOPH mailing lists or SCOPH in general, please feel free to contact the SCOPH Director.