Category Archives: Public health

Call for papers: Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies

Submissions are invited from graduate students for a special issue of the Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies (GJAPS): Urban Futures in the Asia-Pacific (Simon Opit, editor, University of Auckland, New Zealand).

Cities are centres of economic, social, political and cultural activity, but they can also be areas of intense poverty, unhealthy environments, dangerous spaces and captivity. With the current unprecedented rates of growth in the Asia-Pacific unlikely to abate it is of great importance that we maximise the potential of urban spaces while avoiding the multitudinous harm that cities can cause. The Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies is calling for papers that provide perspectives on the possible future of urban spaces in the Asia-Pacific.

Such a theme is open to both quantitative and qualitative perspectives on urban spaces and encourages artistic, empirical or theoretical contributions that relate to, but are not limited to any of the following major themes:

  • Examining urban policies that are argued to promote sustainable urbanism and create more resilient, liveable urban spaces.
  • Assessing the potential of future technologies and/or transport initiatives that offer solutions to urban problems.
  • Investigating layers of urban governance structures and how they impact on urban environments and their development, either as a constructive or restrictive force.
  • Analysing our understandings of urban spaces and providing critical review of the current values that underpin urban practices.
  • Detailing and evaluating methodological innovation in the field of urban studies, including new tools and technologies that provide novel ideas and a better of understandings of our urban world.

Contributions are welcome from all fields, including: social sciences and the humanities, architecture and planning, politics and policy analysis, or any other form of urban study.GJAPS interprets the designation “Asia-Pacific” in the broadest sense, to encompass East, Northeast and Southeast Asia, the Malay Archipelago, Australasia, Polynesia and Oceania, the West Coast of the Americas, including California, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, British Columbia, Central and South America.Submissions should be received by 1st of April 2014.

More info here

GJAPS website

Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

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The China Health and Nutrition Survey, 1989–2011

Zhang, B., Zhai, F. Y., Du, S. F. and Popkin, B. M. (2014), The China Health and Nutrition Survey, 1989–2011. Obesity Reviews, 15: 2–7. doi: 10.1111/obr.12119

The China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) began in 1989 with the goal of creating a multilevel method of data collection from individuals and households and their communities to understand how the wide-ranging social and economic changes in China affect a wide array of nutrition and health-related outcomes. Initiated with a partial sample in 1989, the full survey runs from 1991 to 2011, and this issue documents the CHNS history. The CHNS cohort includes new household formation and replacement communities and households; all household members are studied. Furthermore, in-depth community data are collected. The sample began with eight provinces and added a ninth, Heilongjiang, in 1997 and three autonomous cities, Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing, in 2011. The in-depth community contextual measures have allowed us to create a unique measure of urbanicity that captures major dimensions of modernization across all 288 communities currently in the CHNS sample. The standardized, validated urbanicity measure captures the changes in 12 dimensions: population density; economic activity; traditional markets; modern markets; transportation infrastructure; sanitation; communications; housing; education; diversity; health infrastructure; and social services. Each is based on numerous measures applicable to each dimension. They are used jointly and separately in hundreds of studies.

Full text article in PDF

Related links

  • P. Gordon-Larsen, H. Wang, B. M. Popkin, Overweight dynamics in Chinese children and adults, Obesity Reviews, 2014, 15.
  • B. Zhang, F. Y. Zhai, S. F. Du, B. M. Popkin,The China Health and Nutrition Survey, 1989–2011, Obesity Reviews, 2014, 15.

Jacqueline Nivard

Jacqueline Nivard, Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine

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