The existence of health inequities across racial, ethnic, gender, and class lines in the United States has been well documented. Less well understood have been the attempts of major institutions, health programs, and other public policy domains to eliminate these inequities. This issue, a collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program, brings together respected historians, political scientists, economists, sociologists, and legal scholars to focus on the politics and challenges of achieving health equity in the United States. Articles in this issue address the historical, legal, and political contexts of health equity in the United States. Contributors examine the role of the courts in shaping health equity; document the importance of political discourse in framing health equity and establishing agendas for action; look closely at particular policies to reveal current challenges and the potential to achieve health equity in the future; and examine policies in both health and nonhealth domains, including state Medicaid programs, the use of mobile technology, and education and immigration policies. The issue concludes with a commentary on the future of health equity under the Trump administration and an analysis of how an ACA repeal would impact health equity. Contributors. Alan B. Cohen, Keon L. Gilbert, Daniel Q. Gillion, Colleen M. Grogan, Mark A. Hall, Jedediah N. Horwitt, Tiffany D. Joseph, Alana M.W. LeBron, Julia F. Lynch, Jamila D. Michener, Vanessa Cruz Nichols, Francisco Pedraza, Isabel M. Perera, Rashawn Ray, Jennifer D. Roberts, Sara Rosenbaum, Sara Schmucker, Abigail A. Sewell, Deborah Stone, Keith Wailoo

The COVID-19 pandemic shook the world to its core. After a brief pause, organizations of all kinds had to adapt to the new circumstances given to them with very little time. The presence of the pandemic caused multiple threats that caused several disruptions to the norms, beliefs, and practices in various domains of everyday life. Both from macro and micro perspectives, individuals, households, markets, institutions, and governments developed strategies to respond to the new environment-responses that hope to eliminate or at least decrease the threats of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Handbook of Research on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Threats and Impacts of Pandemics explores the COVID-19 pandemic from an interdisciplinary perspective and determines how future pandemics may impact society. Beginning as a health threat, the pandemic has led the way to economic, social, psychological, political, and informational crises necessitating the examination of the phenomenon from different academic disciplines. Covering topics such as distance education, human security, and predictions, this handbook of research is an essential resource for scholars, managers, media representatives, governors, health officials, government officials, policymakers, students, professors, researchers, and academicians.

Disparities in healthcare arise when there is an imbalance between opportunities to achieve optimal healthcare with access, education, and financial means. However, the difficult subject of health disparities in healthcare and its historical origins demonstrate that culture and race may contribute to health crises of minority groups within the United States. Educating vulnerable populations on making lifestyle modifications and reducing stress without educating healthcare professionals about increasing their awareness of hidden biases, prejudgment, and discrimination, will allow health disparities to remain. Examining and Solving Health Disparities in the United States: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a critical reference book that provides discussion on the topic of inequities in healthcare that impact health disparities and serves to increase awareness on these issues. The author particularly explores health disparities from a unifying perspective that supports the understanding of why health disparities occur and how an increase in the awareness, education, and confrontation of discriminatory acts can help make changes at the organizational and societal levels. Covering topics that include cultural clashes, equity, healthcare delivery, and healthcare accessibility, this book is essential for government officials, policymakers, medical administrators, medical professionals, medical boards and directors, researchers, academicians, and students involved in gender studies, cultural studies, social justice, socioeconomics, ethics and law, government, medicine, public health, psychology, sociology, and more.

The complex, highly problematic, often thorny dynamics of trust and authority are central to the anthropological study of legitimacy. In this book, this sine qua non runs across the in-depth examination of the ways in which healthcare and public health are managed by the authorities and experienced by the people on the ground in urban Europe, the USA, India, Africa, Latin America and the Far and Middle East. This book brings comparatively together anthropological studies on healthcare and public health rigorously based on in-depth empirical knowledge. Inspired by the current debate on legitimacy, legitimation and de-legitimation, the contributions do not refrain from taking into account the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the health systems under study, but carefully avoid letting this issue monopolise the discussion. This book raises key challenges to our understanding of healthcare practices and the governance of public health. With a keen eye on urban life, its inequalities and the ever-expanding gap between rulers and the ruled, the findings address important questions on the complex ways in which authorities gain, keep, or lose the public’s trust.

The Electronic Health Record: Ethical Considerations analyses the ethical issues that surround the construction, maintenance, storage, use, linkage, manipulation and communication of electronic health records. Its purpose is to provide ethical guidance to formulate and implement policies at the local, national and global level, and to provide the basis for global certification in health information ethics. Electronic health records (EHRs) are increasingly replacing the use of paper-based records in the delivery of health care. They are integral to providing eHealth, telehealth, mHealth and pHealth - all of which are increasingly replacing direct and personal physician-patient interaction - as well as in the developing field of artificial intelligence and expert systems in health care. The book supplements considerations that are raised by national and international regulations dealing with electronic records in general, for instance the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union. This book is a valuable resource for physicians, health care administrators and workers, IT service providers and several members of biomedical field who are interested in learning more about how to ethically manage health data.