Blog #4-United States of America

Sustainable Development Goal #3 is to promote health lives and well-being for all ages. 

One of the target goals (3.6.1) is to lower the total death rate caused by motor vehicle accidents. For this week's blog, I chose to investigate how the United States of America is working towards having safer roads and highways. The reason why i chose the United States is because this is where we live and I think there can be a lot of improvement done in regards to having fewer motor vehicle accidents. 

Photo accessed from https://www.makeroadssafe.org/

According to Safe Roads USA, there are over 143 Million Americans that commute on roads every single day. In a single year, it is estimated that about 30,000 of these Americans die due to motor vehicle accidents (Safe Roads USA, 2019). There are many reasons why people get in accidents. They might loose control of their vehicle, get distracted or even be under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.

One way Americans are working on having safer driving habits are through technology. Most Americans can admit to texting and driving. It only takes a second to look down at your phone and in that one second you can rear end someone, hit an object in the road or even a person crossing the street.In the more recent years cars are being built with the capability to connect to Bluetooth so that drivers are able to talk "hands free". People can make phone calls without having to actually hold the phone. On iPhone's, there is a Do Not Disturb mode you can turn on while you are driving. This temporarily stops messages from popping up while the phone is connected to Bluetooth and the phone senses that the vehicle is in motion. Whenever someone sends a text they will see that the recipient has Do Not Disturb on and that the recipient will get back with them later. 

Technology companies like AT&T launched the "It Can Wait" campaign. The goal of the campaign is for drivers to wait until they are no longer behind the wheel of a vehicle to send a text, email, etc. Drivers essentially pledge to stay off their phones and focus on driving. This campaign launched in 2010 and so far, 38, 984,588 people have made the pledge (AT&T It Can Wait, 2019). 

The company uses billboards and commercials to advertise their campaign in hopes of having safer drivers throughout America. 

Photo accessed from AT&T It Can Wait Campaign

Safe Roads USA and the AT&T Campaign are two ways America has started to initiate progress in making roads safer. I can only hope that more people have better driving habits and there are a significantly less amount of motor vehicle accidents. 

Citations

BE A STAR. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.itcanwait.com/home.

Distracted Driving Behaviors Making American Roads More Dangerous. (2019, April 5). Retrieved from https://www.makeroadssafe.org/distracted-driving-behaviors-making-american-roads-more-dangerous/.

Blog #3- Canada

One aspect of Sustainable Development Goal #3 (3.4.2) is to lower the suicide mortality rate. For this week's blog, I chose to look at Canada and what its country is doing to help lower the suicide mortality rate. Currently, there are about ten deaths by suicide per day in Canada (Suicide in Canada, 2019). While there are many aspects of mental health, suicide is one of the biggest issue people are facing regarding their mental health. In fact, death by suicide is the ninth leading cause of death for people in Canada.

The Mental Health Strategy for Canada was established in 2012. Their goal is to "Promote mental health across the lifespan in homes, schools, and workplaces, and prevent mental illness and suicide wherever possible."(Mental Health,2019). The Mental Health Strategy for Canada works with police officers, firefighters and police dispatchers to train them to talk to people who are considering suicide.

Canada as a country is addressing suicide by funding research for prevention. Since 2000, Canada has increased the amount of research they share about suicide from 2% to 6% in 2015. Some aspects they are focusing their research on is family history of mental illness, social factors, and exposure to violence.

Another foundation dedicated to preventing suicide is called The Life Line Canada. Something unique to them is that they have an app for smart phones that users can download and it provides education, prevention strategies and most importantly, it can easily connect you to a crisis center 24/7.

Photo accessed from https:thelifelinecanada.ca
 

The Life Line Canada website has many different resources to help people. They provide free online chat, texting, emailing, and over the phone chatting for anyone considering suicide. On their website, they also have resources that help you find a professional to speak to. That is just a short list but they have many different resources they provide for free to anybody that needs them. 

Although Canada's suicide rate is still around 10 for every 100,000 people, it has dropped since the 1970's where it was about 16 for every 100,000. Canada has committed to lowering the number of deaths by suicide and their progress is shown.

Citations

Mental Health and the Law. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/English/what-we-do/mental-health-and-law.

The LifeLine Canada Foundation (TLC). (2019, March 27). Retrieved from https://thelifelinecanada.ca/.

Blog #2- Ghana's Pledge to Health

This week I am looking at the country of Ghana and how they are keeping up with Sustainable Development Goal #3.

There are an estimated 270,000 people currently living with HIV in Ghana. 270,000 people may sound like a huge number, but there was a 57% reduction of new HIV cases between the years of 2000-2015. (United Nations, 2019).

Testing for HIV is pretty low in Ghana due to fear of discrimination and the stigma that goes with it. Mother-to-Child Transmission is the biggest cause of death in children under 5 in Ghana. 
However, Ghana wants to provide more education and resources in hopes of working with the third SDG. Part of SDG #3 is for everyone (which includes women and girls!) to have access to sexual and reproductive health resources. By having more resources and education, Ghana hopes that the stigma around HIV/AIDS will go down and more people will get tested.
Some of the main goals that go toward meeting this are:

• By 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS/HIV

• By 2030, end preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 years of age

Ghana has partnered with UNAIDS to meet these goals by 2030. UNAIDS is a foundation to prevent HIV and end AIDS. By partnering with UNAIDS, Ghana hopes to reduce their country's HIV infections overall. Ghana has begun educating people about using clean needles and syringes, limiting the number of sexual partners, where to receive condoms, and how to prevent onward transmission (UNAIDS, 2019).

Picture accessed from

https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2017/march/20170328_ghana

Citations

Goal 3: Good Health. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://gh.one.un.org/content/unct/ghana/en/home/global-agenda-in-ghana/sustainable-development-goals/SDG-3-good-health.html.

HIV prevention. (n.d.). Retrieved October 5, 2019, from https://www.unaids.org/en/topic/prevention.

Unaids.org. (2017, March 28). Ghana chairs UNAIDS PCB for 2017 and confirms commitment to ending AIDS by 2030. Retrieved from https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2017/march/20170328_ghana.