About this Research Topic

Background

Afghanistan is one of the most war-affected countries worldwide, facing serious economic, socio-political, socio-cultural, and health problems. Therefore, a public health perspective is critical to identify determinants of health, health risks, resources, and behavior in order to protect and promote health of the entire population purposefully. However, empirical evidence on Public Health is lacking, particularly for Afghanistan’s rural and remote areas. The overall picture is very contradictory, as most health indicators paint a bleak picture of a country without basic health care for all, while clearly positive trends are emerging. For instance, although Afghanistan’s child mortality rate is amongst the highest worldwide, the average life expectancy has been steadily increasing reaching 64.8 years in 2019. Due to a lack of empirical evidence, these surprising contradictions cannot be explained and need to be further explored to give an appropriately complex description of the health situation in Afghanistan today.

Although Afghanistan is regularly mentioned in world developmental reports, the knowledge about the health situation in Afghanistan from a Public Health perspective is limited. One of the reason for this is widely missing or internationally not accessible data. Moreover, in attempting to adequately describe health in Afghanistan, researchers are confronted with several multifaceted and interrelated issues, such as differences between large cities and remote areas in terms of access to medical care, the complex relationships between cultural norms and health care, health promotion and prevention, between modern and traditional medicine, between gender and health, the role of religion in health, and the presence and intersection of severe health inequalities across different dimensions (such as social class, education, ethnicity, religion, region, gender, age). This Research Topic aims at presenting a complex picture of the various dimensions of health in Afghanistan.

We welcome submissions regarding, but not limited to, the following:
- quantitative empirical research based on primary data;
- qualitative empirical research based on primary data (e.g. interviews, ethnography, media analysis a.s.f.);
- secondary (and critical) analysis of existing data (e.g. data from Ministries, UNDP, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, etc.);
- theoretical contributions about different dimensions of health in Afghanistan, for instance, gender, cultural norms, religion, relationship between traditional and modern medicine

We would like to acknowledge Stefanie Harsch acted as coordinator and contributed to the preparation of the proposal for this Research Topic.

Keywords: health, diversity, Afghanistan, inequality, health risks, child mortality

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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