Ideas within topic organizations,health: (click suns to rate or comment on ideas)

1 Feed hungry people around the world while playing a game that improves your vocabulary! The U.N. World Food Programme donates 20 grains of rice for every correct definition at Freerice.com. E-mail
 
2 Permanent UN fund for disaster relief so that emergency aid can be spent quickly when needed, instead of begging and waiting for donations while people die. Fund it with regular dues or taxes. Now it's been created: CERF. E-mail
 
3 People who are determined to kill themselves should do so in a way that their organs can be donated and save the lives of others. (suicide)
 
4 Website wish list: Website emergency kit. A site which allows me to rapidly construct a website for lost child, natural disaster, explosion, etc. Information on site contents, who to contact, how to get info to public, etc. E-mail
 
5 Get an affinity credit card that donates to charity for each use. Every year, dump it and change to another one because affinity cards pay out much larger charity donations upon sign up, compared to donation amounts for everyday spending. E-mail
 
6 Establish an institution that is a combination of old people's home, destitute women's home, and orphanage. This will create an institution with three generations of people requiring help or support under one roof, and these people can help each other. E-mail
 
7 As part of their professional development, doctors could spend one week each year in a free medical clinic in a poor part of their country or in a third world country. Imagine how much better a person each doctor would be from that experience. E-mail
 
8 Save lives of heart attack victims: put defibrillators in public places and train people in their use like CPR. See this New England Journal of Medicine editorial. E-mail
 
9 Require that landmines be made with self-destruct mechanisms to make them effective for a time regarded as necessary for a military goal, but after that time ineffective via planned obsolescence or by broadcasting their presence. E-mail
 
10 A program in which parents are nominated for best parent(s) of the year. The government or private sector could get involved by paying their bills for a year while they give seminars and workshops to others on how to be an effective parent. E-mail
 
11 To raise money needed by charities (such as schools) for specific needs, set up a website to allow recipients to post proposals and allow donors to choose which they will fund. DonorsChoose is an example. E-mail
 
12 Hospitals in the developed world could donate and export their old redundant equipment and furnishings to developing world countries. In many instances last year's model is much better than none. E-mail
 
13 Since Chinese restaurants keep fishtanks to let diners select live fish for their meal, why not keep a garden next to a restaurant where diners could select their own live vegetables, fruits, and herbs? You couldn't get more fresh. E-mail
 
14 With >6 billion people on earth now, and ~30 billion in human history, don't you think we could find 50 or 60 of the brightest to figure out a way to eliminate the need for wars altogether? Maybe a permanent UN council? E-mail
 
15 Post Clinical Trials: Make drug companies monitor new drugs for 24 months after release and provide reports on effectiveness as part of the public literature. E-mail
 
16 High school students, organize a Head Shave for Cancer Research event at your school. Have the students donate to see their favourite teachers and administrators go bald. E-mail
 
17 Encourage organ donation by paying people to list on a central registry to give their organs after death. After death, pay a second fee to a relative if he/she allows the organs to be used. This would save many lives, and help poor families. E-mail
 
18 Backward facing seating arrangement in buses can reduce head & upper body injury due to sudden braking or accidents because the upper-body will get pressed into the backrest cushion instead of bumping on the front seat. E-mail
 
19 Polluted cities can give a rebate to residents who buy hybrid (gasoline-electric) cars and turn in a conventional gasoline car for recycling. Pay for it with a gasoline and diesel tax. E-mail
 
20 A charity "mutual fund", like Community Chest or United Way. But instead of giving to local charities, it would give to the most efficient charities in the world, as defined by cost per DALY. E-mail
 
21 Change the food sales tax: instead of being proportional to price, make it proportional to calories. Like the tax on cigarettes, that would discourage consumption of fat food and boost vegetable consumption to reduce heart disease and stroke. E-mail
 
22 To reduce illegal drug crops, encourage organic farming of fruits, vegetables, medicinal herbs and flowers (exotic orchids) along with associated processing & packaging facilities, with assured buy-back under the aegis of UN. Couple with agri-tourism. E-mail
 
23 I would like to see a set of books written by some type of UN organization that is written for individual countries to show people how to eliminate human suffering and hunger and give the people in each country the motivation to do that. E-mail
 
24 Trans fats contribute to heart disease that may kill several million people a year. Food product manufacturers should be required to put the amount of this fat on food labels. E-mail
 
25 Human News, a website whose editorial policy is to report news with equal attention to all people, instead of more to Americans or other popular news countries. E-mail
 
26 Do not keep the name of organ donors secret for more than a year. A TV program can be arranged where the organ donor's family meets the recipient's. The emotion & gratitude of the recipients will encourage more organ donation. E-mail
 
27 Fast food chains should include one helping of vegetables in all their burger and other menus, for example, disguised as finely chopped vegetables added to the burger or more salad into the burger beyond the lettuce leaf! Roopa Karkhanis E-mail
 
28 To encourage more organ donation, distribute organ donor cards and pamphlets with documents everyone receives, such as driver's licences or ID cards. E-mail
 
29 To reduce healthcare costs, companies that buy insurance for their employees could form a large buyers' union to bargain for cheaper prices from doctors and drug companies. E-mail
 
30 Women who might have children should eat enough folic acid (200 micrograms/day) before and during early pregnancy to prevent neural tube defects, a common type of birth defect. E-mail
 
31 Send nutritionists along with the normal, required, health inspections to all restaurants and vending machine companies to advise on healthy nutrition. Many restaurants haven't changed their recipes in decades despite advances in health knowledge. E-mail
 
32 Hamburger restaurants should use spinach rather than iceberg lettuce. The U.S. government should provide incentives for restaurants to limit portions and provide more nutritious fare. E-mail
 
33 Let WHO & the government test every person of a country for AIDS within a week. Have the program repeated after some months. Do this in all countries within a year. Thus we can identify all AIDS patients. Easier to control AIDS with no unknown patients. E-mail
 
34 A computer device in cars which restricts their speed to the local legal limit by communicating to devices by(in) the road. This would reduce accidents from drunk driving, drag racing, and other speeding, and would prevent many dangerous police chases. E-mail
 
35 To improve medical care in poor areas, use Barefoot Doctors--lesser qualified, lower paid practitioners trained to diagnose and treat simple conditions and to pass other cases to fully qualified doctors. Might be an additional nursing qualification. E-mail
 
36 A team of experts from various fields whose full-time job is scouring the world for man-made accidents waiting to happen, like unintentional nuclear missile launches, nuclear reactor meltdowns, or epidemics of preventable diseases, and suggest fixes. E-mail
 
37 Wars are like earthquakes or other disasters: rare and intermittent yet devastating. Human nature, like plate tectonics, doesn't change, thus we can map wars over time to look for hot spots, like faults, and reveal causes. E-mail
 
38 Make dams of sand in rivers that flow through poor countries and communities that do not have fresh or clean water. The sand dams will filter the water for down-river safe use. The process is used in wells in poor countries. E-mail
 
39 There are frequent reports of child-bashing & capital punishment of school children by teachers (sometimes proving fatal). There is an imperative need for starting an NGO 'Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children' (SPCC), on the lines of the SPCA. E-mail
 
40 There are so many people who are still suffering from depression, even very young people. Why can't schools offer seminars to give practical help to young people in this area? It would help them their whole lives!
 
41 Since people identify more with an individual victim than with whole groups, advocacy groups should raise support for a cause by publicizing one person's story. Examples: a child brain-damaged by malaria; a woman dying of TB. E-mail
 
42 To reduce smoking, add the health care cost of smoking to the cigarette tax. Punish smugglers who tried to avoid the tax by making them aid nurses to care for lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease patients who smoked. E-mail
 
43 Encourage contraception: Allow advertising; provide funding (private charities, insurance coverage, and public services) for vasectomies, tubal ligations, implants, prescriptions, barrier methods. E-mail
 
44 Movie: Again, as sarcastic reply to "Never again." Stories of 1994 Rwanda genocide. See this book or the movie "Hotel Rwanda." E-mail
 
45 If you're too busy to go to the gym and live or work in a tall building, get some quick exercise and save a little electricity by climbing the stairs instead of taking the elevator. If it's too far, get off the elevator part way up, then walk from there. E-mail
 
46 To increase donations to charity: since people like things named after them, build things in poor countries named after donors/sponsors (schools, health clinics, fish ponds, wells). Give plaques and photos. E-mail
 
47 To quit smoking or reduce the harm a bit: Before smoking, put 2-4 drops of water in the filter. Suck off excess water. Smoke. It will be smoother. Then see the dark brown deposition in filter & think how much of such dirt you have put in your lungs! E-mail
 
48 Governments should use marginal cost of money--the most lives that could be saved by the next million dollars (example: 300 lives by vaccination)--to gain perspective by showing budgets in lives, not dollars, spent by not doing that. (opportunity, utils) E-mail
 
49 Voluntary organizations may recruit members where people with free time gather, such as senior citizen recreation centers, game clubs, bars, or unemployment offices. E-mail
 
50 If you buy a $3 lunch from school every day, pack your lunch for one week every month and become a $19/month St. Jude Children's Memorial Hospital sponsor. This is a simple way to save a dying child's life. E-mail
 


Home