Health promotion with young people has largely been framed by theories of behaviour change to target 'unsafe', 'unhealthy' and/or 'risky' behaviours. These theories and models seek to encourage the development in young people of reasoned, rational and risk-aware personal strategies. This book presents an innovative and critical perspective on young people and health promotion. It explores the limits and possibilities of traditional health behaviour change models with their focus on reason, risk and rationality by examining the embodied dimensions of meaning-making in health promotion programs. Drawing on an array of critical social theories and approaches to knowledge production the authors identify and engage the aesthetic and affective dimensions of young people's engagement with issues such as road safety, sexualities, alcohol and drug use, and physical and mental health and well-being. The book will appeal to researchers and practitioners in the fields of health promotion and health education, public health, education, the sociology of health and illness, youth studies and youth work.

Radiation and the effects of radioactivity have been known for more than 100 years. International research spanning this period has yielded a great deal of information about radiation and its biological effects and this activity has resulted in the discovery of many applications in medicine and industry including cancer therapy, medical diagnostics and quality control during manufacturing.
After Chernobyl, there has been a tendency for the public to regard radiation as harmful, even in situations where the doses are equal to, or below the natural level. Radiation and Health aims to increase awareness by presenting a balanced view of the nature of radiation and its existence in the environment, as well as discussing its effects on plants, animals and humans. It provides a survey of current knowledge from the discovery and basic theory of radiation and radioactivity to more recent developments concerned with the nature of radiation and its effect on biological systems. Numerous examples, exercises and diagrams are included to make this book accessible to non-specialists.

First published in 1999, this volume examines the history of psychiatry and pathogenic parenting models over the past two centuries and contains the results of a study carried out by the author on the experiences of the parents of patients with Schizophrenia drawn from a sample of parents of patients in a forensic and a community setting. Michael Ferriter draws out the themes of the rival claims of organic and non-organic explanations of disorder, therapeutic optimism and therapeutic pessimism and rivalry between the medical professions and the non-medical for supremacy in the treatment of the mentally disordered. Ferriter further explores the issues of blame and guilt, the quality of interaction between mental health professionals and parents and the relevance of attribution theory as an explanation of why parents might still experience self-blame, even when they have nothing to blame themselves for.

First published in 1999, this volume responds to a large and growing interest among health policy and research circles on the use of purchasing alliances to leverage change in health care. This book gives detailed and useful specifics on how a leading alliance has fared in California, the most competitive health care market in the United States. Although it is generally accepted that large organizations are more effective purchasers of health insurance, little work has been done to carefully examine the reasons that underlie that phenomenon. Yet, creating interventions and designing potential solutions requires a thorough understanding of the issues. The econometric analysis adds to the limited literature on the influence of premium on choice behaviour for employees of small firms, and introduces an analysis of choice behaviour in a purchasing cooperative setting. The political section of this book presents a much more detailed historical account and analysis of California's small group market reforms, the most significant health-related legislation in the state in the prior decade, than has been previously available. The conclusions are becoming particularly relevant, both in California and elsewhere, as the issues of reform of the individual market for health insurance comes to the forefront.

First published in 1997, this study reports on a study of 221 sex workers in Queensland, Australia. The workers were interviewed by an interviewer with experience in the industry. They were asked a variety of questions relating to how they came to enter the industry, their knowledge of and attitudes towards safe sex, and a variety of other questions to do with lifestyle, service use and sexual health, and contact with the police and legal system. Sex work emerges as an activity which has a number of advantages. The pay is good, the hours are short and the work enables the worker to meet some interesting people and engage in social activities. Unlike other occupations, entry into sex work is somewhat haphazard (few appearing to plan entry to this industry as a career path) but, once in the industry many find it has benefits as well as disadvantages. Primary amongst these latter are the risks of acquiring a sexually transmitted disease (AIDS being uppermost in their minds) or the fear of violence which is associated with the context in which services are provided. In addition, sex workers often manifest a lifestyle which includes substance use and abuse. Relationships with police are often problematic and many workers report experiences which are critical of the legal system. This book provides a broad insight into the industry which, for parts of Australia, is subjected to substantial change. Such insights contribute not only to our understanding of the industry itself but also to the kind of health promoting activities which need to be initiated.

First published in 1998, this volume recognises that the face is important in human relationships and a facially impaired person is therefore disadvantaged. In this study the causes and social consequences of facial disfigurement are considered, the means whereby people adapt to revised appearance are explored, and an evaluation is made of professional help. Suggestions are given for improving the contribution of social work to rehabilitation.

First published in 1999, this innovative book explores in detail the essential components of working with families whose children are on the Child Protection Register. It provides a comprehensive guide to professionals, highlighting and addressing the gaps and ambiguities in central government guidance. The chapters, written by academics and leading professionals in the field, offer multi-disciplinary perspectives on models of assessment, core group practice, child protection plans and working in partnership with children and families. Practical guidance is offered to those who participate in post-registration practice and to those who participate in post-registration practice and to those who supervise or train professionals working in this area. This volume is of particular relevance to practitioners, students, managers and trainers in social work, health, education, probation and voluntary settings. It provides a unique collection of case examples, checklists and exercises enabling the reader to develop their own practice or use the material as a framework for promoting inter-agency practice within the supervision nor training context.

How to apply statistical methods to survey data—a guide to effective analysis of health surveys.

With large health surveys becoming increasingly available for public use, researchers with little experience in survey methods are often faced with analyzing data from surveys to address scientific and programmatic questions. This practical book provides statistical techniques for use in survey analysis, making health surveys accessible to statisticians, biostatisticians, epidemiologists, and health researchers. The authors clearly explain the theory and methods of survey analysis along with real-world applications. They draw on their work at the National Institutes of Health as well as up-to-date information from across the literature to present:

• The sampling background necessary to understand health surveys.
• The application of such techniques as t-tests, linear regression, logistic regression, and survival analysis to survey data.
• The use of sample weights in survey data analysis.
• Dealing with complications in variance estimation in large health surveys.
• Applications involving cross-sectional, longitudinal, and multiple cross-sectional surveys, and the use of surveys to perform population- based case-control analyses.
• Guidance on the correct use of statistical methods found in software packages.
• Extensive bibliography.

First published in 1998, this volume considers the Nuremberg Code in light of new ethical grey areas which have become evident due to recent scientific advancements, particularly the questions of DNA and cloning. The contributors reflect in 26 articles on the impact of the Code, events which prompted it including Japan, and more recent ethical issues raised. The book contains the results of two European/American preparatory workshops for the First World Conference on Ethics Codes in Medicine and Biotechnology (October 1997 Freiburg, Germany) supported by the leading national institutions in the field. It aims to stimulate research about codes, the effects of codification and other forms of implementing ethics. It breaks new ground with interdisciplinary and international discourse on the subject, emphasising the need for a complete collection of codes for systematic research and evaluation and filling the gap in literature on the subject to date.

For the growing number of health professionals who are engaged in processes of evaluation in a variety of contexts within the world of healthcare, The Evaluation Handbook is an easy-to-use resource. Encouraging an evidence-based approach to practice, it provides:
* guidelines on how to design and evaluate an intervention
* examples of good practice
* reliable and easy-to-use measures
* advice on how to work effectively.

The handbook is designed to prompt self-evaluation and group project evaluation. It illustrates how simple evaluation methods can help to break down the divisions between research and practice and how more practitioners can apply such methods to improve the quality of care as well as the treatments and services which they offer their patients and clients. The examples, drawn from clinical settings, community practice and work in the voluntary sector, illustrate the kind of evaluation that can be undertaken by a small-scale team or a single practitioner with limited resources.
The Evaluation Handbook will be a useful source of reference for those new to evaluation as well as more experienced managers and researchers.

Natural disasters and cholera outbreaks. Ebola, SARS, and concerns over pandemic flu. HIV and AIDS. E. coli outbreaks from contaminated produce and fast foods. Threats of bioterrorism. Contamination of compounded drugs. Vaccination refusals and outbreaks of preventable diseases. These are just some of the headlines from the last 30-plus years highlighting the essential roles and responsibilities of public health, all of which come with ethical issues and the responsibilities they create. Public health has achieved extraordinary successes. And yet these successes also bring with them ethical tension. Not all public health successes are equally distributed in the population; extraordinary health disparities between rich and poor still exist. The most successful public health programs sometimes rely on policies that, while improving public health conditions, also limit individual rights. Public health practitioners and policymakers face these and other questions of ethics routinely in their work, and they must navigate their sometimes competing responsibilities to the health of the public with other important societal values such as privacy, autonomy, and prevailing cultural norms. This Oxford Handbook provides a sweeping and comprehensive review of the current state of public health ethics, addressing these and numerous other questions. Taking account of the wide range of topics under the umbrella of public health and the ethical issues raised by them, this volume is organized into fifteen sections. It begins with two sections that discuss the conceptual foundations, ethical tensions, and ethical frameworks of and for public health and how public health does its work. The thirteen sections that follow examine the application of public health ethics considerations and approaches across a broad range of public health topics. While chapters are organized into topical sections, each chapter is designed to serve as a standalone contribution. The book includes 73 chapters covering many topics from varying perspectives, a recognition of the diversity of the issues that define public health ethics in the U.S. and globally. This Handbook is an authoritative and indispensable guide to the state of public health ethics today.

First published in 1997, this volume emerged in the ongoing struggle between those favouring centralized and those favouring decentralized government, and has three goals: 1) To illustrate how theories of federalism and intergovernmental relations can provide a useful framework for examining how to 'divide up the job in the health care area'; 2) To assess the capacity of the states to actually implement health care policy changes; 3) To weigh the merits of alternative visions of the future roles of states and the federal government in health care policy.

First published in 1999, this aims to shift the balance from current concerns about individual behaviour and its health effects to an understanding of the social factors that shape both circumstances and behaviour conducive to health. Its focus is the fact that organized work in paid employment is the common experience of most adults before their sixties, and that individuals have widely varied employment security, working conditions and job control that are likely to affect health (for good and ill) beyond working age itself. It brings together usually disparate work in the sociologies of health and illness and the body; and the sociologies of work and organizations. Importantly, the book is research-based. The argument is supported with primary data that the author has collected in varied workplaces in Britain - a pottery manufacturer, a food-processing firm and the NHS among them and analysis of official statistics and large data sets, as well as secondary literature which is international in scope. The audience includes first and higher degree students in sociology, health and environmental sciences and management studies.

This title was first first published in 2002: Understanding the link between institutional contexts and drug problems is crucial to the process of developing appropriate drug policies and drug demand reduction strategies. However, this link is too often taken for granted, with most drug-related research relying on epidemiological, bio-medical or clinical approaches, ignoring the social contexts in which drug use finds its causes and where its consequences are most visible and hardest felt. This book analyses the institutional responses to the drug problem in the States of Central and Eastern Europe, providing conclusive evidence that the drug problem is a social one and that its causes emerge from a broad array of social factors. Charting the changing policy perceptions and attitudes towards drugs and related problems alongside new organizations designed to counteract drug-related problems, the book provides important new insights into one of the most important problems confronting nations around the world.

Noncommunicable Diseases: A Compendium introduces readers to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) - what they are, their burden, their determinants and how they can be prevented and controlled. Focusing on cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and chronic respiratory disease and their five shared main risk factors (tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and air pollution) as defined by the United Nations, this book provides a synopsis of one of the world's biggest challenges of the 21st century. NCDs prematurely claim the lives of millions of people across the world every year, with untold suffering to hundreds of millions more, trapping many people in poverty and curtailing economic growth and sustainable development. While resources between and within countries largely differ, the key principles of surveillance, prevention and management apply to all countries, as does the need to focus resources on the most cost-effective and affordable interventions and the need for strong political will, sufficient resources, and sustained and broad partnerships. This compendium consists of 59 short and accessible chapters in six sections: (i) describing and measuring the burden and impact of NCDs; (ii) the burden, epidemiology and priority interventions for individual NCDs; (iii) social determinants and risk factors for NCDs and priority interventions; (iv) global policy; (v) cross-cutting issues; and (vi) stakeholder action. Drawing on the expertise of a large and diverse team of internationally renowned policy and academic experts, the book describes the key epidemiologic features of NCDs and evidence-based interventions in a concise manner that will be useful for policymakers across all parts of society, as well as for public health and clinical practitioners.

Covering the lifespan of women from puberty to old age, this comprehensive collection provides ground-breaking research and theory that challenges current conceptions of women's health and illustrates the diversity of approaches in this burgeoning field. The interdisciplinary angle of the book will appeal to a wide-ranging readership and includes detailed commentaries on key topics such as:
anorexia nervosa
menstruation
sexual abuse
breast cancer
sexual violence
drug abuse
menopause
self-harm
sexual health
harassment
contraception
disability
women with HIV
screening
abortion
pregnancy
motherhood
exercise
transgender issues
eating disorders
stress in the workplace
dementia
body image
depression

Drawing on contributions from the UK, USA, Australia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Eire and Canada, "Women's Health" aims to be a source book for information, to provoke debate and to assert the importance of 'the woman question' in considerations of health. This authoritative and extensive collection represents a major contribution to contemporary developments in the field of women's health.

This book explores the normalization of HIV and AIDS, reflecting upon the intended and unintended consequences of the multifarious "AIDS industry." The Normalization of the HIV and AIDS Epidemic in South Africa deals with the manner in which the HIV and AIDS epidemic has become such a well-known disease with such wide-ranging ramifications. With its focus on the "AIDS industry," this book examines issues such as the framing of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in a manner that greatly fostered notions of stigmatization and moralization. This book looks at the complexities of dealing with the epidemic in contemporary South Africa, examining the difficulties of addressing the social aspects of a disease in the context of increased focus on technological quick-fix solutions. De Wet explores these issues thoroughly, looking at the social determinants of the spread of the disease as well as the configuration and the nature of the responses to it, and their increasing marginalization as factors to address in an era of increased biomedicalization and concomitant normalization. This book will intrigue scholars and students of public health, global health care, medical sociology, and African Studies.

This title was first published in 2001: During the last twenty years government rhetoric in the UK has increasingly advocated that statutory health and social care services should regard and treat recipients as 'consumers' in the same way as companies and organizations in the private sector. This involves a considerable cultural change on the part of both service providers and their clients, and this timely study explores the extent to which such a cultural change is actually taking place in British society. The utilization of welfare services by a sample of people aged 70 and above on discharge from inpatient care and in a short period afterwards is examined as a critical testbed for key components of consumerism, including participation, representation, access, choice, information and redress. The book explores not only the extent to which opportunities are being provided for users to play an active role in their care, but also their degree of willingness to assume such a role.

This title was first first published in 2002: Understanding the link between institutional contexts and drug problems is crucial to the process of developing appropriate drug policies and drug demand reduction strategies. However, this link is too often taken for granted, with most drug-related research relying on epidemiological, bio-medical or clinical approaches, ignoring the social contexts in which drug use finds its causes and where its consequences are most visible and hardest felt. This book analyses the institutional responses to the drug problem in the States of Central and Eastern Europe, providing conclusive evidence that the drug problem is a social one and that its causes emerge from a broad array of social factors. Charting the changing policy perceptions and attitudes towards drugs and related problems alongside new organizations designed to counteract drug-related problems, the book provides important new insights into one of the most important problems confronting nations around the world.

Risk management, assessment and reduction, alongside patient involvement, is an essential part of the current NHS reforms. This book draws together and summarises the latest information on risk in healthcare. It outlines the facts patients need and the level of involvement they require to make informed decisions, and emphasises the practical aspects of how practitioners can best explain risk. The first section of the book concentrates on defining risk and the factors influencing individuals as they make decisions about risk, and the latter part focuses on how clinical teams make decisions about organisational matters and the working environment. All health professionals, including doctors, nurses and managers throughout primary and secondary care will find it an essential reference.

This book draws together both primary and secondary empirical research and existing literature to examine transgressive subcultural activities and engagement in digital social spaces (DSS). The book addresses four objectives: 1. To understand how young peoples' subcultures arise online and they are constructed and experienced in DSS 2. To understand how and why DSS matter to young people 3. To understand if any DSS controls exist in these online spaces and 4. To understand how identity locations such as social class, gender and ethnicity and/or their intersections shape young peoples' engagement and behaviour(s) in DSS. In addressing these objectives with a focus on European contributions, the text provides a holistic understanding of the purpose of digital social spaces in shaping young peoples' identities and self-perceptions. It will be of interest to postgraduate students, secondary school teachers, lecturers and scholars in education, sociology, youth studies and technology.

This title was first published in 2000: Over the past decade the welfare state has come under sustained attack not only from quarters which never approved of its policies, but also from political theorists who used to support it. With the collapse of communism, the policy of comprehensive welfare provision came under renewed scrutiny. It was argued that its impact on work incentives is most detrimental. Examining in detail current unemployment debates within Western welfare states, this book seeks to verify or refute the view that non-work is increasingly chosen by work shy individuals - the 'pathological' theory of unemployment. Drawing from a range of disciplinary perspectives - from social philosophy and the history of philosophy, to occupational psychology and feminist economics - this interdisciplinary analysis reveals that the "pathological" theory of unemployment, with its reliance on a deficient depiction of human nature and its disregard of non-pecuniary work incentives and empirical evidence on benefit fraud, cannot be upheld.

This title was first published in 2002: Presenting revealing insights into the structure and functioning of the Project 2000 courses, this book examines the original, creative and evolutionary research processes which led to the identification of student nurses' unique and common experiences, and portrays the learning milieu in which students developed a self-concept of being a nurse. Employing Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenological approach, the book explores the concepts of intentionality, thrownness, being-in-the-world-with-others, temporality and active subject . It represents a substantial contribution to existing knowledge concerning student reflection and development, forms of teaching, leadership and supervision, and student exposure to a variety of experiences in clinical practice. It also contributes important new perspectives both to ongoing discussions related to socialization theory and to the qualitative methodology literature.

"Persuading People to Have Safer Sex" offers a lucid, in-depth, student-friendly and academically thorough discussion of AIDS prevention and health persuasion. In so doing it provides an introduction to the ways that social scientific research can be brought to bear on a daunting health problem.
Covering many aspects of the AIDS crisis, the book introduces readers to the severity of the AIDS problem and explains the epidemiology of the disease. It discusses why persuasion is so important, explicates cognitive theories of AIDS prevention, and notes the role emotions and communication play in safer sex prevention. It also discusses:
*functions that unsafe sex plays in peoples' lives;
*why people, notably minority women, frequently choose to engage in unsafe sex; and
*social factors underlying the spread of AIDS in urban America and portions of Africa.
As a resource for introducing students to the role that theory and research play in health communication and psychology, the volume is appropriate for use in communication, journalism, social psychology, and public health courses, and will be of value to scholars, researchers, and all who seek to understand the use of persuasion in changing behavior.

This title was first published in 2001. Featuring contributions from the UK, Finland, The Netherlands and Greece, this unique book explores the ongoing tensions and important ethical, legal and social issues related to the development of prenatal screening and the growth of new genetic technologies.