Once regarded as taboo, it is now claimed that we are a death-obsessed society. The face of death in the 21st century, brought about by cultural and demographic change and advances in medical technology, presents health and social care practitioners with new challenges and dilemmas. By focusing on predominant patterns of dying; global images of death; shifting boundaries between the public and the private; and cultural pluralism, the author looks at the way death is handled in contemporary society and the sensitive ethical and practical dilemmas facing nurses, social workers, doctors and chaplains. This book brings together perspectives from social science, health-care and pastoral theology to assist the reader in understanding and negotiating this 'new death'. End-of-life care and old age, changing funeral and burial practices, new stigmas such as drug-related bereavements, are highlighted, and theories of dying and bereavement re-examined in their context. The concluding chapters incorporate recent case studies into an exploration of the meanings and shape of holistic and integrated care. Students interested in death studies from a sociological and cultural viewpoint as well as health and social care practitioners, will benefit from its critical appraisal and application of the established knowledge base to contemporary practices and ethical debates.

Healthcare managers, professionals and service users operate in an increasingly complex environment in terms of policy, regulation and governance arrangements. The policy process is becoming pluralised as competing narratives are drawn upon to influence practice. A wide range of contradictory and inconsistent policies are on offer to healthcare stakeholders, which ultimately results in a broad spectrum of responses, adaptations and improvisations throughout the process of policy implementation. The impact on managerial and professional practice is significant: Whilst some voices are suppressed or ignored, the complex nature of contemporary policy contexts can also help local actors exercise their agency and advance their agenda. This edited volume investigates how contemporary policy trends are influencing healthcare systems, organisations and professions and explores the various ways in which policy implementation could be enacted, resisted and reinvented by healthcare managers and professionals on the ground. It sheds light on the complex web of connections that exist between policy development (Part I), its translation into practice (Part II), and the activities of organisational leaders who are trying their best to make sense of - and succeed in - challenging policy contexts (Part III).

This timely monograph focuses on India and Brazil's use of compulsory licensing, one of the most significant and controversial TRIPS flexibilities. This is a topical work at this critical time when the COVID-19 has stirred up the debate about compulsory licensing and access to medicines. A closer look into the historical use of compulsory licences in certain countries can offer some takeaways for the current situation. The author studies historical developments and political conditions of the patent system and compulsory licensing from the earliest stage to the modern arena, with a great emphasis on TRIPS. After conducting a cross-national study of India and Brazil, the book moves on to evaluate the different philosophies on compulsory licensing of multilateral organizations such as the EU, the WIPO, the WTO, and NGOs. This important book will strongly appeal to intellectual property students, academics, policymakers, and lawyers practicing in the area. It will also be of interest to academics working in the areas of international law, development, and public health as well as state actors and others with relevant concerns working in multilateral organizations.

The essays commissioned for this book analyze the impact of city living on health, focusing primarily on conditions in the United States. With 16 chapters by 24 internationally recognized experts, the book introduces an ecological approach to the study of the health of urban populations.

This book assesses the primary determinants of well-being in cities, including the social and physical environments, diet, and health care and social services. The book includes chapters on the history of public health in cities, the impact of urban sprawl and urban renewal on health, and the challenges facing cities in the developing world. It also examines conditions such as infectious diseases, violence and disasters, and mental illness.

Paralleling emerging trends in cyber-health technology, concerns are mounting about racial and ethnic disparities in health care utilization and outcomes. This book brings these themes together, challenging readers to use, promote, and develop new technology-based methods for closing these gaps. Edited by a leading urban health advocate and featuring 16 expert contributors, the book examines cyber-strategies with the greatest potential toward effective, equitable care, improved service delivery and better health outcomes for all. The rise of e-Patients and the transformation of the doctor-patient relationship are also discussed.

Few issues concern the American public today more than health care. Just ask anyone who has sat for hours in an HMO waiting room or made countless phone calls trying to have a claim settled-or anyone who can't get coverage. But whenever basic reform is proposed the insurance industry opens a massive campaign against it.

Health care today is part of big business, which in defeating the Clinton plan successfully pushed any kind of basic reform off the political agenda. Continuing citizen support for some form of public insurance is, says Milton Fisk, a sign that basic reform is still possible. In his new book, he argues persuasively that basic reform goes beyond a matter of life and death-it's integral to maintaining a society where concern for others holds its own against the market.

Health care, observes Fisk, is not simply an individual responsibility but a public good much like education, and commitment to the social values underlying these public goods is essential to any just society. A healthy society as a value worth pursuing becomes an empty slogan when the poor get inferior health care, when workplaces are dangerous to health, and when a focus on medical treatment leaves out our bodies' environment.

Taking in the broad sweep of social policy in the last half-century, Fisk describes the shift from welfare toward competitiveness as a key factor in the rise of corporate care in the United States. He analyzes the failure of the Clinton health care plan in detail and shows that its commitment to corporate health care was at odds with its reforming intent. He then argues that without national health insurance, needless obstacles will stand in the way of a healthy society. Ideally, the public fund behind this insurance would be derived from a progressive income tax.

Skillfully blending philosophy, economics, and public policy, Fisk's book breaks new ground in political morality and raises important questions about the way people's needs for health care are being defined to satisfy corporate priorities. At a time when so many Americans can barely afford to get sick, no one concerned with this issue can afford to ignore this work of realism and vision.

This book investigates public medical insurance reform in China and studies its effects from both institutional and empirical study perspectives. It provides the reader with academic evidence for understanding the transformation of public medical insurance and its effect on the utilization of healthcare services, expenditure for medical care, individuals' financial portfolio allocation, and well-being. The main content of the book comprises two parts. First, institutional transformations of public medical insurance are considered: medical insurance reform in rural and urban China, and problems of medical insurance reform in the country. Second, it looks at the impact of public medical insurance reforms in China: evidence-based on empirical studies, including determinants of participation in medical insurance, the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme and its effects on the utilization of healthcare services, medical insurance and its effects on out-of-pocket expenditure, risky financial market participation, and well-being in China. This study provides academic evidence about these issues based on economic theories and econometric methods using many kinds of nationwide Chinese representative survey data. The book is highly recommended to readers who are interested in up-to-date and in-depth empirical studies on the mechanisms of participation in medical insurance and the impact of public medical insurance reforms on individuals and household behaviors in China. This volume will be of interest to those who are interested in the Chinese economy, social security policymakers, and scholars with an econometric analysis background.

Athletes are always aiming to be faster, better, stronger. New techniques to enhance their sporting performance have increasingly been linked to use of novel psychoactive substances (NPS) and other hard-to-detect substances like performance-enhancing drugs. This book offers a timely analysis of the new challenges posed by this phenomenon in the anti-doping community. The authors present the first comprehensive perspective on the rapidly shifting doping scenario and reflect on use, regulation, policy, and market structure of NPS used in sports. They highlight the challenges with the list of prohibited substances and methods in and out of competition. They also evaluate how methods to detect new drugs present an ongoing battle for doping control as they have to be adapted constantly. Topics covered within the chapters include: Contamination of Sports Supplements with Novel Psychoactive Substances Untested Supplement Use Among Athletes: An Overlooked Phenomenon? International Drug Control: Protecting the Health of the Athlete Analysis of New Chemical Entities in a Sport Context Emerging Drugs in Sport establishes a clear benchmark on the policy discussion, drawing from available evidence and sources, including athletes' personal experiences, to generate a fact-based resource that informs a research as well as wider audience. The book is essential reading for those working in anti-doping, substance misuse, sports, ethics, and human enhancement. It also is useful for policy-makers, legislative personnel, and other professionals with an interest in protecting clean sport. "Doping is one of the greatest threats to the integrity of sport. We must never be tempted to turn our back on the problem and hope it will disappear. The benefits and values of clean sport have never been more important to the world. That is why this book with its wide-ranging approach is so valuable." Thomas Bach, President, International Olympic Committee "Physical activity is vital to a healthy living, which is why doping is not just an assault on fair competition, but also on health. I strongly commend this book for compiling advanced knowledge on performance-enhancing drugs and promoting health through sport." Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization

This book outlines the origins of Danish Capitalism and prosperity, from a poor and devastated minor state in the 19th century to a consolidated universal mixed economy welfare state at the end of the 20th century. The book argues that firm-based innovation drove Danish prosperity and redistributive capacity. It is a comprehensive but manageable examination of the institutions and choices that shaped a highly innovative and wealthy nation. The book relies on history and economic theory, presents commonly accepted narratives and theories, and contributes new explanations. Therefore, the book also traces both antecedents and the current state of 20th-century capitalism in Denmark and particular outcomes and critical institutions such as firm age, the labor market, and pension schemes. The book will be of interest to academics in business history and economic policy, as well as policymakers and all those interested in mixed economy studies.

Personalized healthcare -- or what the award-winning author Donna Dickenson calls "Me Medicine" -- is radically transforming our longstanding "one-size-fits-all" model. Technologies such as direct-to-consumer genetic testing, pharmacogenetically developed therapies in cancer care, private umbilical cord blood banking, and neurocognitive enhancement claim to cater to an individual's specific biological character, and, in some cases, these technologies have shown powerful potential. Yet in others they have produced negligible or even negative results. Whatever is behind the rise of Me Medicine, it isn't just science. So why is Me Medicine rapidly edging out We Medicine, and how has our commitment to our collective health suffered as a result?

In her cogent, provocative analysis, Dickenson examines the economic and political factors fueling the Me Medicine phenomenon and explores how, over time, this paradigm shift in how we approach our health might damage our individual and collective well-being. Historically, the measures of "We Medicine," such as vaccination and investment in public-health infrastructure, have radically extended our life spans, and Dickenson argues we've lost sight of that truth in our enthusiasm for "Me Medicine."

Dickenson explores how personalized medicine illustrates capitalism's protean capacity for creating new products and markets where none existed before -- and how this, rather than scientific plausibility, goes a long way toward explaining private umbilical cord blood banks and retail genetics. Drawing on the latest findings from leading scientists, social scientists, and political analysts, she critically examines four possible hypotheses driving our Me Medicine moment: a growing sense of threat; a wave of patient narcissism; corporate interests driving new niche markets; and the dominance of personal choice as a cultural value. She concludes with insights from political theory that emphasize a conception of the commons and the steps we can take to restore its value to modern biotechnology.

This collection originated from a conference at Templeton College, Oxford by leading practitioners and researchers and has been revised, updated and edited for publication. The collection is intended to provide an evaluation of the implementation of health reforms and will be of interest to readers interested in health policy and health management.

This book broadens the visioning on new care environments that are designed to be inclusive, progressive, and convergent with the needs of an aging population. The contents cover a range of long-term care (LTC) settings in a single collection to address the needs of a wide audience. Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, rethinking the spatial design of care facilities in order to prepare for future respiratory and contagious pathogens is one of the prime concerns across the globe, along with social connectedness and autonomy in care settings. This book contributes to the next generation of knowledge and understanding of the growing field of the design of technology, programs, and environments for LTC that are more effective in infection prevention and control as well as social connectedness. To address these issues, the chapters are organized in four sections: Part I: Home- and community-based care; Part II: Facility-based care; Part III: Memory care and end-of-life care; and Part IV: Evidence-based applied projects and next steps. (Re)designing the Continuum of Care for Older Adults: The Future of Long-Term Care Settings is an essential resource for researchers, practitioners, educators, policymakers, and students associated with LTC home and healthcare settings. With diverse topics in theory, substantive issues, and methods, the contributions from notable researchers and scholars cover a range of innovative programming, environments, and technologies which can impact the changing needs and support for older adults and their families across the continuum of care.

Too often, cultural competence training has led to the inadvertent marginalization of some individuals and groups and the reinforcement of existing stereotypes. This text explores the concept of cultural humility, which offers an exciting way forward for those engaged in the helping professions. In contrast to cultural competence, cultural humility challenges individuals to embark on a lifelong course of self-examination and transformational learning that will enable them to engage more authentically with clients, patients, colleagues, and others. The book traces our understanding of and responses to diversity and inclusion over time with a focus on the United States. Topics explored include: Us and Them: The Construction of Categories Cultural Competence as an Approach to Understanding Difference Transformational Learning Through Cultural Humility Fostering Cultural Humility in the Institutional/Organizational Context Cultural Humility and the Helping Professional The book presents examples that illustrate how the concept of cultural humility can be implemented on an institutional level and in the context of individual-level interactions, such as those between a healthcare provider or therapist and a client. Diversity, Cultural Humility, and the Helping Professions: Building Bridges Across Difference is essential reading for the health professions (nursing, medicine), social work, psychology, art therapy, and other helping professions.

Transformational Collaborative Outcomes Management (TCOM) is a comprehensive, multi-level conceptual framework for system management and improvement. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of TCOM by using person-centered, collaborative processes for decision making. The issue with current human services systems is that there is a lack of access to care and that the system is focused on providing services as cheaply as possible. TCOM focuses on helping the greatest number of people while maximizing effectiveness. By fully understanding the nature of the business of helping, the author seeks to offer ways to create and sustain effective and positively evolving helping systems. He lays out a series of goal-directed social change processes which allow people at every level of a system to begin a shift towards transformational practice and the emergence of transformational systems. Building on three decades of work in a large community of scholars and practitioners, this book will represent the first full description of the conceptual framework and will appeal to an interdisciplinary group of scholars across nonprofit management, healthcare management, and social work.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), e-health is the combined use of electronic communication and information technology in the health sector and, moreover, it enables a safer, higher quality, more equitable, and sustainable health system. Emerging Communication Technologies for E-Health and Medicine is a fundamental source for the advancement of knowledge, application, and practice in the interdisciplinary areas of healthcare, e-health, m-health, u-health, sensors, biomedical engineering, and telemedicine. Due to its grounding in research and theory evidence, this book is designed for use in graduate courses in health management, medicine, nursing, health professionals, and medical informatics. The book can help to e-health contents, applications, and interesting experiences. It is an important way to communicate e-health concepts.

New thinking about the management of public health services has stimulated a widespread movement for health sector reform across the world. This book examines the feasibility and desirability of common reforms in low-income countries, based on in-depth case studies in Ghana, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand, and asks whether governments possess or can develop the capacities needed for these new and often complex roles. The book challenges conventional reform wisdom, and argues that reform approaches that are most .

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama in March 2010 is a landmark in U.S. social legislation, and the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the Act has ensured that it will remain the law of the land. The new law extends health insurance to nearly all Americans, fulfilling a century-long quest and bringing the United States to parity with other industrial nations. Affordable Care aims to control rapidly rising health care costs and promises to make the United States more equal, reversing four decades of rising disparities between the very rich and everyone else. Millions of people of modest means will gain new benefits and protections from insurance company abuses - and the tab will be paid by privileged corporations and the very rich. How did such a bold reform effort pass in a polity wracked by partisan divisions and intense lobbying by special interests? What does Affordable Care mean-and what comes next? In this updated edition of Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know (R), Lawrence R. Jacobs and Theda Skocpol-two of the nation's leading experts on politics and health care policy-provide a concise and accessible overview. They explain the political battles of 2009 and 2010, highlighting White House strategies, the deals Democrats cut with interest groups, and the impact of agitation by Tea Partiers and progressives. Jacobs and Skocpol spell out what the new law can do for everyday Americans, what it will cost, and who will pay. In a new section, they also analyze the impact the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law. Above all, they explain what comes next, as critical yet often behind-the-scenes battles rage over implementing reform nationally and in the fifty states. Affordable Care still faces challenges at the state level despite the Court ruling. But, like Social Security and Medicare, it could also gain strength and popularity as the majority of Americans learn what it can do for them.

Health research has made spectacular strides over the past few decades. The value of health research is obvious and irrefutable. What is not so apparent is that people who participate in research may be harmed during the process. Africa prides itself in having some of the most respected universities globally. It is a continent of immense research potential. At the same time, Africa suffers from many of the health burdens of low-income regions. While it affords many research opportunities, this creates the potential for the misuse of power on vulnerable individuals and populations.

This book explores why participants in health research require protection. It also explains how ethical principles and the law can assist inter alia research ethics committees, researchers, funders and institutions at which research is conducted, to safeguard the rights and dignity of individuals contributing to the research enterprise. It engages with this imbalance and examines how well-intentioned aims of ethical health research can be achieved while simultaneously maximising the protection of research participants. It draws on local and international documents and expertise to inform the resolution of many ethical dilemmas and complexities that inevitably arise in health research.

Health Research Ethics: Safeguarding the Interests of Research Participants provides a solid understanding of the normative values for protecting research participants against exploitation, harm and wrong. Since research ethics is multidisciplinary, this book will be of value to a range of professionals and academics inter alia those from the health sciences, social sciences, and legal disciplines.

Through history, interviews, anecdotes, and popular culture, this book examines pregnancy from all angles, covering changing expectations for pregnancy; new definitions of when fatherhood begins; the implications of new, earlier connections to the fetus; and the political, economic, and social consequences to the public. In the 21st century, pregnancy is more than a biological event-it's a cultural phenomenon. A Womb with a View: America's Growing Public Interest in Pregnancy addresses how media influence and changes in society have exposed and commoditized pregnancy like never before, while technology has enabled us to share, record, and preserve all aspects of the pregnancy experience. Each chapter of the book focuses on an aspect of the pregnancy experience, including efforts to peer in and bond with the fetus, the various ways of obtaining advice, the evolving role of expectant fathers, how pregnancy is depicted and treated in popular culture, and branding and marketing to pregnant couples. Interviews with those marketing products and services to pregnant women reveal how pregnancy is now "big business," while real-life stories from pregnant women and images from television and film serve to illustrate our culture's fascination with pregnancy.

The essays commissioned for this book analyze the impact of city living on health, focusing primarily on conditions in the United States. With 16 chapters by 24 internationally recognized experts, the book introduces an ecological approach to the study of the health of urban populations.

This book assesses the primary determinants of well-being in cities, including the social and physical environments, diet, and health care and social services. The book includes chapters on the history of public health in cities, the impact of urban sprawl and urban renewal on health, and the challenges facing cities in the developing world. It also examines conditions such as infectious diseases, violence and disasters, and mental illness.

Managing Medical Devices within a Regulatory Framework helps administrators, designers, manufacturers, clinical engineers, and biomedical support staff to navigate worldwide regulation, carefully consider the parameters for medical equipment patient safety, anticipate problems with equipment, and efficiently manage medical device acquisition budgets throughout the total product life cycle. This contributed book contains perspectives from industry professionals and academics providing a comprehensive look at health technology management (HTM) best practices for medical records management, interoperability between and among devices outside of healthcare, and the dynamics of implementation of new devices. Various chapters advise on how to achieve patient confidentiality compliance for medical devices and their software, discuss legal issues surrounding device use in the hospital environment of care, the impact of device failures on patient safety, methods to advance skillsets for HTM professionals, and resources to assess digital technology. The authors bring forth relevant challenges and demonstrate how management can foster increased clinical and non-clinical collaboration to enhance patient outcomes and the bottom line by translating the regulatory impact on operational requirements.

Health Care Today in the United States details the complexities of health care in the United States and provides readers with up-to-date information on the state of health care, its challenges, and how to navigate the system. Sections cover patient populations, diverse cultures, legalities, the opioid epidemic, the impact of COVID-19, health care costs, insurance and the impact of technology on health care. Written for students seeking a health science degree, as well as health care professionals, nurses, medical students, and those in the field of public health, this book provides a comprehensive view of health care in the U.S.