This volume brings together key readings of significant moments in the understanding of health. It goes beyond the often superficial literature-review style of medical sociology texts. In doing so, this book presents a challenging array of classic and new material on the social basis of health, illness and healing.

The" Reader" incorporates many of the elements of the "new" medical anthropology and sociology of health and illness. Each section of the book is introduced with an essay by the editor, providing a fresh perspective on topical issues setting out the core concerns of the authors whose work follows. In addition, the" Reader" is supported by an extensive guide to further reading. It provides students with an introduction to the field and a critical insight into current debates.

Written by a pediatrician for pediatric clinicians on the front line in response to the ever increasing obligations they acquire for the well being of children, this book focuses on the potential of health care to impact the social morbidities that affect children's health. Dr. Rushton does not suggest that child health practitioners must do more, but rather they must reorient their efforts in order to achieve optimal outcomes for children. As specialists in child health, pediatric clinicians have skills they can utilize to ensure better outcomes for children, but doing so will require a reorganization of health supervision and the establishment of links with other social services. Group visits, psychosocial screening, school health, public-private partnerships, home visitation, parent-child centers, and use of auxiliary anticipatory guidance specialists are all tools described in the development of a coordinated, community-based, family-centered approach to pediatric health care supervision. This is a book for private practitioners, community health professionals, academicians who support them, and all those others who want to ensure that our children are nurtured by the child health care system. The crux of this book is to provide a template for thoughtful consideration by the thousands of pediatric providers who care deeply about their profession.

For parents, few infections scored higher than poliomyelitis on the 'dread' factor from the early years of the twentieth century as each successive wave of the disease outdid its predecessor in the number of children it crippled and killed. But, from the 1950s, this picture abruptly changed when preventive vaccines were developed which have brought the disease to the edge of global eradication. Part I, Epidemic Emergence, 1881-1920, looks at the transition from endemic to epidemic poliomyelitis in Europe and the United States. Part II, Global Expansion, 1921-55, covers the pre-vaccination period of epidemic poliomyelitis at world, continental and island scales. Part III, Global Retreat, 1955-88, focuses upon the control of poliomyelitis by mass vaccination campaigns. Part IV, Global Eradication, concludes the book by focusing upon the road to eradication, to which the Forty-first World Health Assembly committed in 1988. And so, at the beginning of a new millennium, poliomyelitis looks set to be the first disease since smallpox in 1979 to be eradicated by direct human intervention, with the interruption of wild poliovirus transmission expected in 2005. The evolution of poliomyelitis to global epidemiological significance from the 1920s marks it out as one of the world's major emergent infections of the twentieth century. What causes diseases to wax and wane in time and space is a theme of contemporary scientific interest as we seek to understand the appearance of new conditions such as Ebola fever, Legionnaires' disease, and HIV, and this book contributes to our comprehension of likely causes.

With the debate over health care consuming the nation, this timely book looks at the evolution of healthcare policy in the United States throughout its history. Concise, authoritative, and unbiased, The Healthcare Debate provides meaningful context for thinking about one of the most controversial public policy issues the United States faces. It traces the evolution of the argument over the government's role in healthcare financing and delivery since the early 1800s, with an emphasis on the major reform efforts since the mid-20th century. Following the complex dynamics of public health policy across U.S. history, The Healthcare Debate brings together a wide range of voices on the subject—presidents, policymakers, reformers, lobbyists, and everyday citizens. Each of its eight chronologically organized chapters focuses on the battle over government involvement in healthcare in a specific era, drawing on historic documents and the latest retrospective research. With President Obama making healthcare reform his top domestic priority in his first year in office, this remarkable new book could not be more timely.

The set of techniques known collectively as real-time data capture (RTDC) is becoming increasingly important in medical research. Based on the collection of data in people's typical environments, RTDC is primarily used with self-reported data, such as medical symptoms and psychological states. Now, its guiding principles and supporting technologies also provide a framework for scientists to monitor physiological information such as heart rate, blood pressure, and skin conductance. This volume gives the most complete view yet of the state of RTDC science and its potential for use across the health and behavioural sciences.

This book discusses the socioeconomic effects of Right-to-Work (RTW) laws on state populations. RTW laws forbid requiring union membership even at union-represented worksites. The core of the 22 long-term RTW states was the Confederacy, cultural descendants of rigidly hierarchical agrarian feudal England. RTW laws buttress hierarchy and power imbalance which unions minimize at the worksite and by encouraging higher educational attainment, social mobility, and individual empowerment through group validation. Contrary to claims of RTW proponents, RTW and non-RTW states do not differ significantly in unemployment rates. RTW states have higher poverty rates, lower median household incomes, and lower educational attainment on average and median than non-RTW states. RTW states on average and median have lower life expectancy, higher obesity prevalence, and higher rates of all-cause mortality, early mortality from chronic conditions, child mortality, and risk behaviors than non-RTW states. The higher mortality rates result in startlingly higher annual numbers of years of life lost before age 75. Stroke mortality at age 55-64 in RTW states results in nearly 10,000 years annually lost in excess of what it would be if the mortality rate were that of non-RTW states. A review of respected publications describes the physiological mechanisms and epidemiology of accelerated aging due to socioeconomic stress. Unions challenge hierarchy directly at work-sites and indirectly through encouraging college education, social mobility, and community and political engagement. How startling that feudal hierarchy lives in 21st century America, shaping vast differences between states in macro- and micro-economics, educational attainment, innovation, life expectancy, obesity prevalence, chronic disease mortality, infant and child mortality, risk behaviors, and other public health markers! Readers will gain insight about the coming clash between feudal individualism and adaptive collectivism, and, in the last chapter, on ways to win the clash by "missionary" work for collectivism.

A description of the social, educational, and economic impact of living with a neurological genetic disorder, neurofibromatosis 1. The many unpredictable and potentially stigmatizing possible symptoms of NF1, which range from physical disfigurement to severe learning disorders, may have serious consequences in every aspect of daily life. NF1 was for many years wrongly diagnosed as the Elephant Man's Disease.

Ablon examines the psychosocial costs of this misdiagnosis and the ways in which stage, screen, and television parlayed The Elephant Man into the personification of the grimmist extreme of ugliness. This portrayal engendered fear and anxiety for affected persons and their families and also had an impact on the scientific and medical communities. Ablon analyzes the factors that affect individual positive adaptation to NF1 and the demands of American society, and offers suggestions for families, support systems, and health care providers for treatment of affected individuals.

This data-rich volume reviews short- and long-term consequences of residential or institutional care for children across the globe as well as approaches to reducing maltreatment. Up-to-date findings from a wide range of developing and developed countries identify forms of abuse and neglect associated with institutionalization and their effects on development and pathology in younger children, adolescents, and alumni. The sections on intervention strategies highlight the often-conflicting objectives facing professionals and policymakers balancing the interests of children, families, and facilities. But despite many national and regional variations, two themes stand out: the universal right of children to live in safety, and the ongoing need for professionals and community to ensure this safety. Included among the topics: Maltreatment and living conditions in long-term residential institutions for children Outcomes from institutional rearing Recommendations to improve institutional living Historical, political, socio-economic, and cultural influences on Child Welfare Systems Latin American and the Caribbean, African, Asian, Middle-Eastern, Western and Eastern European countries and the United States of America are presented. Child Maltreatment in Residential Care will inform psychology professionals interested in the role of residential care in the lives of children, and possibilities for improved outcomes. It will also interest social workers and mental health practitioners and researchers seeking evidence-based interventions for families adopting children from residential care.

This series provides a variety of different discussions on topics within the field of growth factors and cytokines in health and disease.

This book explores Ireland's Marriage Bar, examining its impact on women's lives and the predominantly feminised nursing profession. Information on the history of nursing and the evolution of the nursing profession tends to focus on critical events or key persons who shaped the profession. What is less known and explored is the women nurses' work experiences or how the world outside the ward affected the nurse and the nursing profession at moments in time. This book takes one of these moments in time, the period of the Marriage Bar, and examines the women nurses' lives and the nursing profession during this period of Ireland's history. It does so by adopting a historical perspective and a lived experience perspective of women who had to negotiate this practice. Fifty years on from the Bar removal, as remnants of this time in Ireland's history remain, legislative and constitutional change are required to right the wrongs of the past.

In 1997, when the author began research in Peru, she observed a profound disconnect between the birth care desires of health personnel and those of indigenous women. Midwives and doctors would plead with her as the anthropologist to ""educate women about the dangerous inadequacy of their traditions."" They failed to see how their aim of achieving low rates of maternal mortality clashed with the experiences of local women, who often feared public health centers, where they could experience discrimination and verbal or physical abuse. Mainly, the women and their families sought a ""good"" birth, which was normally a home birth that corresponded with Andean perceptions of health as a balance of bodily humors. Peru's Intercultural Birthing Policy of 2005 was intended to solve these longstanding issues by recognizing indigenous cultural values and making biomedical care more accessible and desirable for indigenous women. Yet many difficulties remain. Guerra-Reyes also gives ethnographic attention to health care workers. She explains the class and educational backgrounds of traditional birth attendants and midwives, interviews doctors and health care administrators, and describes their interactions with local families. Interviews with national policy makers put the program in context.

This handbook fills major gaps in the child and adolescent mental health literature by focusing on the unique challenges and resiliencies of African American youth. It combines a cultural perspective on the needs of the population with best-practice approaches to interventions. Chapters provide expert insights into sociocultural factors that influence mental health, the prevalence of particular disorders among African American adolescents, ethnically salient assessment and diagnostic methods, and the evidence base for specific models. The information presented in this handbook helps bring the field closer to critical goals: increasing access to treatment, preventing misdiagnosis and over hospitalization, and reducing and ending disparities in research and care. Topics featured in this book include: The epidemiology of mental disorders in African American youth. Culturally relevant diagnosis and assessment of mental illness. Uses of dialectical behavioral therapy and interpersonal therapy. Community approaches to promoting positive mental health and psychosocial well-being. Culturally relevant psychopharmacology. Future directions for the field. The Handbook of Mental Health in African American Youth is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as clinicians and related professionals in child and school psychology, public health, family studies, child and adolescent psychiatry, family medicine, and social work.

This issue of Medical Clinics, guest edited by Drs. Marc Shalaby and Edward Bollard, is devoted to Quality Patient Care: Making Evidence-Based, High Value Choices. Articles in this issue include: Cardiovascular testing in asymptomatic patients: carotid duplex, cardiac stress testing, screen for PVD; Utility of echocardiogram in the evaluation of heart murmurs; Evidenced-based recommendations for the evaluation of palpitations in the primary care setting; Radiologic evaluation of common orthopedic complaints: low back pain, non-traumatic knee/shoulder/hip pain, and ankle injuries; Indications and usefulness of common injections for non-traumatic orthopedic complaints - shoulder, trochanteric bursa, epidural injections, tennis elbow, and knee; The evidence-based evaluation of chronic cough; Evaluation of uncomplicated headache; Evaluation of syncope; Pre-operative assessment: Cataract surgery, pre-operative EKG testing, screening for cardiopulmonary disease, urinalysis, coagulation studies, other lab assessments; The approach to occult GI bleed; The role of EGD surveillance for patients with Barrett's esophagus; The evidence-based evaluation of iron deficiency anemia; Cancer screening in the elderly; Utilization and safety of common over the counter dietary/nutritional supplements, herbal agents and homeopathic compounds for disease prevention; Utilization of oxygen for the patient with dyspnea; IV fluids, enteral or parenteral nutrition; and Symptom control at the end of life.

Winner of the 2022 Cheryl Frank Memorial Prize. Critical realism, as a toolkit of practical ideas, helps researchers to extend and clarify their analyses. It resolves problems arising from splits between different research approaches, builds on the strengths of different methods and overcomes their individual limitations. This original text draws on international examples of health and illness research across the life course, from small studies to large trials, to show how versatile critical realism can be in validating research and connecting it to policy and practice. To meet growing demand from students and researchers, this book is based on the course at UCL, first taught by Roy Bhaskar, the founder of critical realism.

At the turn of the millennium, the world experienced a dramatic increase in funding for global health programs. Competing demands for these resources meant that policymakers needed access to valid, evidence-based information on the costs and consequences of a broad range of health interventions. By providing systematic and comparable information about purchasing health in LMICs, Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, Second Edition greatly informed and enriched these conversations and we hope -- improved resource allocations. Nearly ten years later, increased attention to chronic diseases and the importance of health systems in providing access to quality care is once again reshaping the global health landscape. Low- and middle-income countries are continuing to set priorities for funding and deploying specific interventions, but with a greater appreciation for the contribution of program and economic evaluation to informed decision-making. The need to make decisions across an increasingly complex set of policy and intervention choices, attuned to specific health system capabilities, makes a third iteration of Disease Control Priorities all the more critical. Similar to the first and second editions of Disease Control Priorities (DCP1 and DCP2), the aim of the third edition (DCP3) is to influence program design and resource allocation at global and country levels by providing an up-to-date comprehensive review of the effectiveness of priority health interventions. It presents systematic and comparable economic evaluations of selected interventions, delivery platforms, and policies based on newly developed economic methods. DCP3 further expands on the scope of intervention assessments found in DCP1 and DCP2 by presenting findings in nine individual volumes. It is clear that optimal global health programming requires a comprehensive evidence-base to help determine what works, what does not, how much it will cost. DCP3 will allow users to set global and national priorities for health in an informed manner."

For your physician to give you quality medical care, you must be aware of your medical history and issues. Here's how you can help your medical provider:

Learn about your risk factors and current medical diagnoses Ask questions when you don't understand Obtain second, third, or more opinions Maintain copies of your medical records Review these records often Keep yourself educated

The medical profession is depending on you to help them keep you healthy

A riveting portrait of the cultural struggles and political conflicts of proposed copper-nickel mines in Minnesota's Iron Range On an unseasonably warm October afternoon in Saint Paul, hundreds of people gathered to protest the construction of a proposed copper-nickel mine in the rural northern part of their state. The crowd eagerly listened to speeches on how the project would bring long-term risks and potentially pollute the drinking water for current and future generations. A year later, another proposed mining project became the subject of a public hearing in a small town near the proposed site. But this time, local politicians and union leaders praised the mine proposal as an asset that would strengthen working-class communities in Minnesota. In many rural American communities, there is profound tension around the preservation and protection of wilderness and the need to promote and profit from natural resources. In Mining the Heartland, Erik Kojola looks at both sides of these populist movements and presents a thoughtful account of how such political struggles play out. Drawing on over a hundred ethnographic interviews with people of the region, from members of labor unions to local residents to scientists, Kojola is able to bring this complex struggle over mining to life. Focusing on both pro- and anti-mining groups, he expands upon what this conflict reveals about the way whiteness and masculinity operate among urban and rural residents, and the different ways in which class, race, and gender shape how people relate to the land. Mining the Heartland shows the negotiation and conflict between two central aspects of the state's culture and economy: outdoor recreation in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes and the lucrative mining of the Iron Range.

Now in its third edition, this textbook serves to frame understandings of health, health-related behavior, and health care in light of social and health inequality as well as structural violence. It also examines how the exercise of power in the health arena and in society overall impacts human health and well-being. Medical Anthropology and the World System: Critical Perspectives, Third Edition includes updated and expanded information on medical anthropology, resulting in an even more comprehensive resource for undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers worldwide. As in the previous versions of this text, the authors provide insights from the perspective of critical medical anthropology, a well-established theoretical viewpoint from which faculty, researchers, and students study medical anthropology. It addresses the nature and scope of medical anthropology; the biosocial and political ecological origins of disease, health inequities, and social suffering; and the nature of medical systems in indigenous and pre-capitalist state societies and modern societies. The third edition also includes new material on the relationship between climate change and health. Finally, this textbook explores health praxis and the struggle for a healthy world.