Toward a Systems Understanding of Noncommunicable Diseases: A Comprehensive Framework for Global and Caribbean Transformation | ChatGPT5.1 & NotebookLM

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) now account for the majority of global deaths and disability, yet progress in prevention and control remains insufficient, uneven, and structurally constrained. This volume develops an integrated systems framework to explain why chronic diseases — cardiovascular conditions, diabetes, cancers, chronic kidney disease, respiratory disorders, and related metabolic syndromes — continue to rise despite decades of global commitments. Synthesizing evidence across epidemiology, developmental biology, commercial determinants, psychosocial science, food-system analysis, governance, and planetary health, the book introduces a novel typology of “NCD gaps” spanning four domains: burden–response alignment, health-system performance, structural and developmental determinants, and psychosocial and temporal coherence.

The Caribbean region, particularly its Small Island Developing States (SIDS), is presented as a global microcosm where structural vulnerabilities, import-dependent food environments, climate instability, commercial saturation, and intergenerational stress converge to accelerate early-onset NCD patterns. The book offers a strengthened Port-of-Spain Declaration 2.0 (POS-2.0) as a governance architecture for regional transformation.

Integrating developmental origins (DOHaD), trauma-informed perspectives, climate–health interactions, and systems-level policy design, the volume articulates a forward-looking vision for “coherent health futures” grounded in biological, social, ecological, and institutional alignment. The framework aims to guide global health practitioners, Caribbean policymakers, researchers, and intergovernmental bodies in developing durable, multi-level strategies for NCD prevention and control.

Health Sovereignty in the 21st Century: Understanding and Transforming the Commercial Determinants of Health | ChatGPT5 & NotebookLM

Chronic diseases now account for the majority of illness and death worldwide, yet they are often framed as the result of personal lifestyle choices. This narrative obscures the deeper forces shaping health: the commercial systems that determine what products are made available, how they are marketed, how environments are designed, and how public policy is formed. These forces — known as the Commercial Determinants of Health — have become a major driver of preventable disease, particularly in small and developing states where regulatory capacity and bargaining power are limited.

This white paper explains how these systems emerged, how they influence daily life, and why they have become the greatest barrier to preventing and controlling non-communicable diseases. It introduces the concept of health sovereignty: the ability of societies to protect population wellbeing without interference from commercial interests. The paper outlines the legal, economic, and cultural obstacles to health sovereignty and provides evidence-based strategies to realign policy, reshape environments, and protect children and communities. The goal is to support leaders, practitioners, and citizens in creating health systems and social conditions that enable all people to thrive.

From Food to Form: A Regenerative Synthesis of Food Composition, Microbiome Ecology, and Body Patterning | ChatGPT4o

Modern nutrition science has often reduced food to its macronutrient content and calories, overlooking its role as an ecological signal and symbolic interface between body, mind, and biosphere. This white paper proposes a regenerative reframing of health and disease through the dynamic and recursive relationships between food composition, microbiome composition, and body composition. Drawing upon current research in nutritional biochemistry, gut ecology, fascia science, psychoneuroimmunology, and symbolic systems biology, we explore how food not only nourishes but encodes, how microbes translate meaning into metabolism, and how the human form itself is a reflection of relational coherence or systemic breakdown.

By mapping these interdependent layers, we argue for a transition from symptom-based, reductionist paradigms to coherence-first models of regenerative health — where the healing process begins with recognizing food as a medium of communication, microbiota as ecological interpreters, and the body as a living record of attunement or alienation. We conclude with clinical and policy implications that integrate nutrition, microbial health, social determinants, and symbolic literacy into a unified framework for restoring systemic resilience.

Introducing “Ten Essays In Honour of John McMurtry – January 6, 2024 by Jeff Noonan (Author), Giorgio Baruchello (Author)”

This Festschrift collects ten essays — plus an explanatory appendix by John McMurtry — honouring the scope and influence of his life-value onto-axiology (LVOA) and related ideas such as the civil commons. The volume opens with Jeff Noonan’s introduction and Giorgio Baruchello’s survey of McMurtry’s intellectual biography and core concepts, then advances applied and theoretical developments across ethics, public health, political economy, science policy, pedagogy, and food systems. Chapters examine the life-ground of value versus money-sequenced capitalism and the climate emergency (Card), a research horizon for the life-capital synthesis (Noonan), grounding social determinants of health in life-value (Watson), a virtues-based path within LVOA (Myers), two decades of “system-cooked science” (Olivieri), a practical learning program for the life-capital solution (Sahely), and civil-commons-oriented reform of food systems (Sumner & Mustapha), alongside a personal tribute (Barrington). McMurtry’s appendix restates the Primary Axiom of Value and the universal human life necessities, anchoring the contributions in a common evaluative grammar. Together, the essays argue that policies, institutions, and practices are good insofar as they coherently enable wider ranges of thought, felt being, and action across persons and ecologies, and are bad insofar as they disable them.

The Regenerative Lens: A conceptual framework for regenerative social-ecological systems | Buckton et al., | One Earth (2023)

SUMMARY

Societies must transform their dynamics to support the flourishing of life. There is increasing interest in regeneration and regenerative practice as a solution, but also limited cohered understanding of what constitutes regenerative systems at social-ecological scales. In this perspective we present a conceptual, cross-disciplinary, and action-oriented regenerative systems framework, the Regenerative Lens, informed by a wide literature review. The framework emphasizes that regenerative systems maintain positive reinforcing cycles of wellbeing within and beyond themselves, especially between humans and wider nature, such that ‘‘life begets life.’’ We identify five key qualities needed in systems to encourage such dynamics: an ecological worldview embodied in human action; mutualism; high diversity; agency for humans and non-humans to act regeneratively; and continuous reflexivity. We apply the Lens to an envisioned future food system to illustrate its utility as a reflexive tool and for stretching ambition. We hope that the conceptual clarity provided here will aid the necessary acceleration of learning and action toward regenerative systems.