This volume provides a unique sociological focus on education, social factors and health beliefs in health and health care, including a review of the literature to date. Beliefs and health beliefs are considered, including one study evaluating cross-national differences in public beliefs about the causes of health and the role of these beliefs in shaping attitudes to health policy. Another study focuses on the complexity and variation of health care system distrust across neighborhoods in one US city. The topic of education is addressed, including a focus on the importance of identification and intervention in low health literacy. Mental health issues are considered in the context of help-seeking, connections, transitions and utilization of care among adolescents. Social factors are reflected upon including race and ethnicity, literacy and socioeconomic status. Coverage also includes special and traditionally less visible populations, including the health of prisoners and carers of people with autism.

Work on female drinking and female drug and alcohol abuse is proliferating because interest and productivity in alcohol research has expanded. In this work, the editors' primary focus is on the abuse of alcohol, its biological effects, behavioral effects, abuses, and problems. This book updates where this field is at the moment. The first five chapters deal with basic issues of biology, epidemology, and anthropology. The next five chapters deal with substance abuse including antecedents, consequences, comorbidity, fetal effects, special populations, and illicit drug use. Two chapters which follow are concerned with related disorders, that is, smoking and eating disorders. The final chapters cover treatment and prevention.

Australia's venomous snakes are widely viewed as the world's most deadly and are regarded with cautious curiosity, fascination and, regrettably, fear. Australia's Dangerous Snakes examines the biology, natural history, venom properties and bite treatment of medically important venomous marine and terrestrial snakes. It contains comprehensive identification profiles for each species, supported by keys and photographs. In addition to their medical importance, the environmental roles of these snakes and the threats that are causing the decline of many of these reptiles are discussed. Drawing on the authors' experience in the fields of herpetology, toxinology and clinical medicine, this book stimulates respect and admiration and dispels fear of Australia's fascinating snakes. Australia's Dangerous Snakes will provide hours of rewarding reading and valuable information for anyone interested in Australia's unique wildlife and natural history, and will be an essential reference for herpetologists, toxinologists, physicians, zoo personnel and private snake collectors.

Sunlight is a vital component of good health. Like plants that thrive in the sun, we humans too depend on sunlight, in our case for the production of Vitamin D. In the past few decades, however, cultural trends have steered us away from sun exposure. From fear of the potential dangers of UV radiation and the heavy promotion of sunscreen products to artificial work and recreational environments centered on virtual reality, we are all spending much more time indoors and away from the sun. What are the health consequences?
In this informative overview of an often-neglected topic, historian Laurie Winn Carlson examines the historical and cultural factors that have created our indoor lifestyles and the medical evidence that suggests we need to get out in the sun.
She begins by tracing the behavior patterns that have caused a shift indoors. She notes that it was common decades ago for children to spend hours playing outside. Now the lure of video games and heavy sunscreen use have changed all that. Adults, also, live and work in the perpetual twilight of electric lighting. Though we feel comfortable, there is evidence that our bodies have not really adjusted to a lifestyle that is less than a century old.
Carlson explains the growing body of research that challenges government and health industry warnings against the dangers of sunlight. For example, the production of Vitamin D from sun exposure is crucial to maintaining the body's calcium levels, an important factor for healthy bones, especially as we age. There is also evidence of the sun's beneficial effects on psychological disorders such as seasonal depression or difficulty sleeping.
She concludes by arguing for a balanced approach to sun exposure. Although the risk of skin cancers should not be ignored, total avoidance of the sun can be just as risky to our health.

Most health professionals would agree that time and funds are in short supply, even under optimal conditions. Patients, too, would admit similar shortfalls, even with optimal motivation. This book offers self-administered and easily administered interventions designed to promote positive health behaviors while requiring little or no outside funding. Editor Luciano L Abate continues his long tradition of prolific innovations by identifying major changes in today 's health care systems and explaining how targeted, prescriptive promotion/prevention strategies can enhance traditional primary, secondary, and tertiary interventions in key behavioral and relational areas.

This book examines the quest to promote the health and vigour of individuals and populations of liberal democracies. It provides a detailed account of the emergence and working of Danish and English health promotion policies and programs in the areas of obesity control and mental recovery. The book shows that these interventions are supported by a form of optimistic vitalism, according to which we should all work indefinitely to improve our health and vigour. In the areas of both obesity control and mental recovery, equally particular individuals, and the social environment in which they live, are the target of political interventions. The book is above all relevant for social and political science researchers and graduate students as well as for policymakers and practitioners in the field of public health. This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3, Good health and well-being. -- .

The focus of this volume is on the further development of the Quality of Life Theory and the means to measure the concept. The volume summarizes Michalos' fundamental assumptions about the nature of quality of life or human well-being and explains in detail the two variable theory of the quality of life. It gives an update of the journal Social Indicators Research after forty years, an explanation of the role of community indicators in connecting communities, and a critical review of the much publicized Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi report. It deals with the multiple discrepancies theory (MDT), the empirical theory designed to provide the foundation of the pragmatic theory of value. Other concepts discussed in this volume are the stability, sensitivity, and other different features of measures of domain and life satisfaction and happiness, measures of arts-related activities and beliefs, measures of knowledge, attitudes and behaviour concerning sustainable development, and the role of quality of life in sustainable development research. The volume concludes with discussions on connections between social indicators and communities, aspects of community quality of life in Prince George, British Columbia and Jasper, Alberta, and British Columbians' expectations and attitudes going into the third millennium.

This the first account of the emergence and demise of preventive health care for workers. It explores how trade unions, employers, doctors and the government reconfigured the relationship between health, productivity and the factory over the course of the twentieth century within a broader political, industrial and social context.

Key Topics is a short, easy-to-read text that provides basic information about twelve key topics in public health, such as diabetes, cancer, smoking and teenage pregnancy, and how prevention and health promotion should be tackled at community and one-to-one levels. The twelve topics are the 'must-dos' of public health action. They have been selected because they are those addressed in current national public health strategies such as Saving Lives: our healthier nation, and comparable strategies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Many are the subject of National Service Frameworks and other national policies and plans; they are often accompanied by targets which health workers are expected to meet. Topics often relate to each other (e.g. smoking and cancer) so cross-references will be provided. Accessible and useful, in clear plain English. Provides a foundation for further study, planning a work programme, or planning a strategy to meet targets. Practical focus: on health inequalities and how to tackle them, and on help for practitioners who work at a community and one-to-one level. Explicit links to national current public health policy and targets. Reflects recommendations based on best practice and evidence of effectiveness. Focuses on a topic framework (except for the last two chapters) in contrast to other frameworks for health promotion and public health. Attractive layout making full use of bullet points and boxes. Simple line diagrams or tables to illustrate each chapter.

Children with chronic conditions, developmental disorders, and birth defects represent a sizeable minority of American children-as many as one in five. Often their families have financial or other issues limiting their access to appropriate care, thus limiting their adult prospects as well. Compounding the problem, many valuable resources concerning this population are difficult to access although they may be critical to the researchers, practitioners, and policymakers creating standards for quality care and services. In response, the Handbook of Children with Special Health Care Needs assembles research, applied, and policy perspectives reflecting the range of children's problems requiring special services. Widely studied conditions (e.g., communication disorders, substance abuse) and those receiving lesser attention (e.g., tuberculosis) are covered, as are emerging ideas such as the "medical home" concept of continuity of care. Its interdisciplinary outlook makes the Handbook of Children with Special Health Care Needs a vital, forward-looking text for developmental psychologists, pediatricians, early childhood and special education researchers and practitioners, disability researchers, policymakers, and advocates, and providers for children with special health care needs.

This comprehensive reference book addresses the unique challenges facing many African nations as poor infrastructure and economics continue to obstruct access to advanced treatments and AIDS care training. It takes into account the context of settings with limited resources. Information on how to best utilize existing resources and prioritize scaling-up of infrastructure is a critical aspect of this book for those working in HIV/AIDS-related fields in Africa.

What is a just way of spending public resources for health and health care? Several significant answers to this question are under debate. Public spending could aim to promote greater equality in health, for example, or maximize the health of the population, or provide the worst off with the best possible health. Another approach is to aim for each person to have "enough" so that her health or access to health care does not fall under a critical level. This latter approach is called sufficientarian. Sufficientarian approaches to distributive justice are intuitively appealing, but require further analysis and assessment. What exactly is sufficiency? Why do we need it? What does it imply for the just distribution of health or healthcare? This volume offers fresh perspectives on these critical questions. Philosophers, bioethicists, health policy-makers, and health economists investigate sufficiency and its application to health and health care in fifteen original contributions.

This is a cultural history of borders, hygiene and race. It is about foreign bodies, from Victorian Vaccines to the pathologized interwar immigrant, from smallpox quarantine to the leper colony, from sexual hygiene to national hygiene to imperial hygiene. Taking British colonialism and White Australia as case studies, the book examines public health as spatialized biopolitical governance between 1850 and 1950. Colonial management of race dovetailed with public health into new boundaries of rule, into racialized cordons sanitaires.