This title was first published in 2003. The fulfilment of health care rights in a world where resources are scarce is a prominent issue. In this volume, Frances H. Miller introduces studies on a wide variety of aspects of this important yet complex process.

Published in 1998. This book brings together both the history of community involvement and health and ideas and proposals for further developing the potential of this approach. It explores the roots and branches of community involvement, drawing together different strands from within and outside the NHS. It explores the impact of the rapid changes in the NHS and in local government on local communities and patients and ways in which current policy can enhance and enable the general public to be more involved in their own health and effective service provision. Ideas, models and case studies are used to illustrate practical ways in which skills and knowledge can be enhanced.

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.

The health benefits associated with regular physical activity are now widely recognized. This book examines how social determinants such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation and disability can impact on physical activity and its associated health outcomes. It explores the social, cultural, political and environmental factors that influence engagement in physical activity in a range of diverse populations and presents evidence-based, culturally appropriate strategies for targeting and promoting physical activity participation. Each chapter considers how the social determinants that impact on health are formed by the environments in which people live, work, learn and play. Incorporating a series of original case studies, this book analyzes physical activity behaviors in groups such as: African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans military veterans and physically disabled populations low-income populations rural populations LGBT populations. It also includes a variety of useful features such as key terms, summary points and critical thinking questions, as well as a chapter on international perspectives. Physical Activity in Diverse Populations: Evidence and Practice is vital reading for any course touching on social factors in physical activity behavior.

Gerontological Social Work in Action introduces "anti-oppression gerontology" (AOG), a critical approach to social work with older adults, their families, and communities. AOG principles are applied to direct and indirect practice and a range of topics of relevance to social work practice in the context of a rapidly aging and increasingly diverse world. Weaving together stories from diverse older adults, theories, research, and practical tools, this unique textbook prompts social workers to think differently and push back against oppressive forces. It pays attention to issues, realities, and contexts that are largely absent in social work education and gerontological practice, including important developments in our understanding of age/ism; theories of aging and social work; sites and sectors of health and social care; managing risk and frailty; moral, ethical and legal questions about aging including medical assistance in dying; caregiving; dementia and citizenship; trauma; and much more. This textbook should be considered essential reading for social work students new to or seeking to specialize in aging, as well as those interested in the application of anti-oppressive principles to working with older adults and researching later life.

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 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.

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.

This title was first published in 2000: The first book to examine stress in doctors' families in the United Kingdom, this book outlines the results of both qualitative and quantitative research data and a thorough literature review of stress in the medical profession. It has been organised in five chapters beginning with medical students, junior doctors and consultants' stress. Chapter two focuses on specific problems experienced by general practitioners. The content of the third chapter outlines the experiences of women doctors and their family lives. In chapter four overseas doctors, their spouses and their children talk about their experiences which are characterised by cultural diversities. Chapter five focuses on the experiences of non-doctor spouses and children's point of view. The final chapter reviews issues raised by the doctors, their spouses and their children. Approaches to the problems of different groups are suggested and some individual and organisational stress management strategies are outlined. This book is aimed at medical students, hospital doctors and their spouses, general practitioners and their spouses, other health care professionals and students in medicine, social sciences and allied health professions. It will also be of value to counsellors helping doctors and their families suffering from emotional problems.

As digital life stories continue to assume more and more significance across a range of institutions, so too does their potential to bring into focus once marginalised and neglected voices. Breaking new ground by reframing multimedia life stories as a resource for education, public health, and policy, this book challenges policymakers, professionals, and researchers to reimagine how they find out about and respond to people's daily lives and experiences of health, disability, and well-being. The book develops theoretical, methodological, and practical resources for listening to digital stories through a series of carefully selected international case studies, from dementia care education to campaigns in the UN to ban cluster munitions. The case studies explore and illuminate different ways that digital stories have - and have not - been listened to in the past. The authors expose the great potential as well as the complexity of using powerful personal stories in practice. Together, the case studies highlight that processes of listening to, learning from, and making use of digital stories involve unavoidable processes of reinterpretation, recontextualisation, and translation which have significant ethical and political implications for storytellers, listeners, and society. In mapping and theorising the movement of stories into new contexts of policy and practice, the book offers a critical lens on the widely celebrated democratising potential of digital storytelling and its capacity to amplify marginalised voices. Digital Storytelling in Health and Social Policy develops an authoritative and original re-conceptualisation of digital life stories and their use for social justice ends, and will be important reading for researchers and practitioners from a range of backgrounds, including social policy, digital media, communication, education, disability, and public health.

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 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 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.

Divided into 15 chapters, this book provides the reader with an insight into certain representations of mothers and motherhood in history and today's societies in some areas of the world, notably in Britain and Asia. Key facts about the history of motherhood are presented, together with the use of very recent notions and phrases portraying 'good' and 'bad' mothers. An analysis of the concepts of naming and blaming, along with regret with respect to mothers in 21st century societies, provides food for thought. Other issues addressed are varied and numerous: the politics of early intervention, feminist critique, mothers with disabilities and mothers of disabled children, incarcerated mothers, surrogate mothers, teenage mothers, lesbian mothers, and mothering in Eastern Asia, namely in China, Japan, and Korea. Interestingly, both visual arts and literature play a crucial role in this analysis. The publication will appeal to students, academics, researchers, and the general public interested in and seeking to comprehend the shifts that have occurred over time in connection with the vast and inexhaustible subject of motherhood and mothers - a private and public matter. Readers are also provided with a rich reference section dealing with the latest publications on the issues tackled by prominent academics and researchers in human geography, women's studies, sociology, gender studies, contemporary history, and the arts.

The government, the media, HMOs, and individual Americans have all embraced programs to promote disease prevention. Yet obesity is up, exercise is down, teenagers continue to smoke, and sexually transmitted disease is rampant. Why? These intriguing essays examine the ethical and social problems that create subtle obstacles to changing Americans' unhealthy behavior.

The contributors raise profound questions about the role of the state or employers in trying to change health-related behavior, about the actual health and economic benefits of even trying, and about the freedom and responsibility of those of us who, as citizens, will be the target of such efforts. They ask, for instance, whether we are all equally free to live healthy lives or whether social and economic conditions make a difference. Do disease prevention programs actually save money, as is commonly argued? What is the moral legitimacy of using economic and other incentives to change people's behavior, especially when (as with HMOs) the goal is to control costs?

One key issue explored throughout the book is the fundamental ambivalence of traditionally libertarian Americans about health promotion programs: we like the idea of good health, but we do not want government or others posing threats to our personal lifestyle choices. The contributors argue that such programs will continue to prove less than wholly successful without a fuller examination of their place in our national values.

This book considers how largely accepted 'legal truths' about drugs and addiction are made and sustained through practices of lawyering. Lawyers play a vital and largely underappreciated role in constituting legal certainties about substances and 'addiction', including links between alcohol and other drugs, and phenomena such as family violence. Such practices exacerbate, sustain and stabilise 'addicted' realities, with a range of implications - many of them seemingly unjust - for people who use alcohol and other drugs. This book explores these issues, drawing upon data collected for a major international study on alcohol and other drugs in the law, including interviews with lawyers, magistrates and judges; analyses of case law; and legislation. Focussing on an array of legal practices, including processes of law-making, human rights deliberations, advocacy and negotiation strategies, and the sentencing of offenders, and buttressed by overarching analyses of the ethics and politics of such practices, the book looks at how alcohol and other drug 'addiction' emerges and is concretised through the everyday work lawyers and decision makers do. Foregrounding 'practices', the book also shows that law is more fragile than we might assume. It concludes by presenting a blueprint for how lawyers can rethink their advocacy practices in light of this fragility and the opportunities it presents for remaking law and the subjects and objects shaped by it. This ground-breaking book will be of interest not only to those studying and working within the field of alcohol and drug addiction but also to lawyers and judges practising in this area and to scholars in a range of disciplines, including law, science and technology studies, sociology, gender studies and cultural studies

Topical and controversial The Tyranny of Health exposes the dangers of the explosion of health awareness for both patients and doctors, using straightforward language to explain the latest health statistics and and research findings. Michael Fitzpatrick, a full-time inner-city GP, argues from his day-to-day experience in the surgery that health propaganda is having a very unhealthy effect on the nation. Patients are made unnecessarily anxious as a result of health scares which have greatly exaggerated the risks of everyday activities such as eating beef, sunbathing and having sex. Doctors no longer seem content with treating disease but are encouraged by the government to tell people how to live more and more aspects of their lives.
Michael Fitzpatrick concludes that doctors should stop trying to make people virtuous. He argues that we need to establish a clear boundry between the worlds of medicine and politics, so that doctors can concentrate on treating the sick - and leave the well alone.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203129261

Topical and controversial The Tyranny of Health exposes the dangers of the explosion of health awareness for both patients and doctors, using straightforward language to explain the latest health statistics and and research findings. Michael Fitzpatrick, a full-time inner-city GP, argues from his day-to-day experience in the surgery that health propaganda is having a very unhealthy effect on the nation. Patients are made unnecessarily anxious as a result of health scares which have greatly exaggerated the risks of everyday activities such as eating beef, sunbathing and having sex. Doctors no longer seem content with treating disease but are encouraged by the government to tell people how to live more and more aspects of their lives.
Michael Fitzpatrick concludes that doctors should stop trying to make people virtuous. He argues that we need to establish a clear boundary between the worlds of medicine and politics, so that doctors can concentrate on treating the sick - and leave the well alone.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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 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.