"Social Ecology of Infectious Diseases" explores how human activities enable microbes to disseminate and evolve, thereby creating favorable conditions for the diverse manifestations of communicable diseases. Today, infectious and parasitic diseases cause about one-third of deaths and are the second leading cause of morbidity and mortality. The speed that changes in human behavior can produce epidemics is well illustrated by AIDS, but this is only one of numerous microbial threats whose severity and spread are determined by human behaviors. In this book, forty experts in the fields of infectious diseases, the life sciences and public health explore how demography, geography, migration, travel, environmental change, natural disaster, sexual behavior, drug use, food production and distribution, medical technology, training and preparedness, as well as governance, human conflict and social dislocation influence current and likely future epidemics.
* Provides essential understanding of current and future epidemics
* Presents a crossover perspective for disciplines in the medical and social sciences and public policy, including public health, infectious diseases, population science, epidemiology, microbiology, food safety, defense preparedness and humanitarian relief
* Creates a new perspective on ecology based on the interaction of microbes and human activities

Human rights violations are underlying causes of adverse health outcomes for vulnerable people and populations around the world. Public Health and Human Rights provides critical, evidence-based assessments and tools with which to investigate the role of rights abrogation in the health of populations -- from repressive laws to social discord, gender-based violence, human trafficking, and violations in conflict.

Divided into three sections, this provocative work investigates how the complex interactions between rights and health can best be studied, analyzed, and remedied; how the efforts of human rights advocates affect health outcomes; and how modern public health procedures can assist in documenting, understanding, and preventing human rights violations. Part I illuminates the powerful relationship between rights work and public health practice in Thailand, Russia, Burma, and China and in U.S. prisons. Part II explores new methodologies and new uses of previous practices for rights-based public health research. Part III confronts current policy approaches -- such as Brazil's integration of rights, HIV/AIDS programming, and the contradictory and confounding global policies on illicit drugs -- and offers recommendations for future programs and strategies.

HIV/AIDS continues to be the pandemic of our times. It is estimated that 36 to 45 million people including 2-3 million children already are infected worldwide and an additional 4-7 million more are infected each year.
There has not been a comprehensive medically based AIDS prevention book published in the last five years. Since that time many new program interventions have been tried and much has been learned through evidence-based research. HIV Prevention will place special focus on the array of interventions that have been proven effective through rigorous study. If there is one theme that has been learned to date it is that there is no one-size-fits-all prevention approach that will work in all the geographic, demographic and socio-cultural environments impacted by the worldwide AIDS pandemic.
* Discusses all aspects of AIDS prevention, from epidemiology, molecular immunology and virology to the principles of broad-based public health prevention interventions.
* Special focus on the array of interventions that have been proven effective through rigorous study
* Identifies new trends in HIV/AID epidemiology and their impact on creating and implementing prevention interventions
* Incorporates virology, biology, infectious diseases, vaccinology, microbicides and research methodologies into AIDS prevention

The AIDS Pandemic explores the ways in which HIV/AIDS has, and continues to transform the wide range of related disciplines it touches. Novel perspectives are provided by a unique panel of internationally recognised experts who cover the unprecedented impact onf AIDS on culture, demographics and politics around the world, including how it affected the worlds' economy, health sciences, epidemiology and public health. This important far- reaching analysis uses the lessons learned from a wide array of disciplines to help us understand the current status and evolution of the pandemic, as it continues to evolve.
* Unique and timely presentation of new theories and perspectives
* Concentrates on the changes that have taken place in a broad array of related disciplines
* Provides key contextual information, for those new to the field or at interface areas between disciplines
* Includes an international focus on evolving African and Asian experiences
* Focuses on the current strategies for developing vaccines and microbicides
* Outlines harm reduction and prevention programs
* Explores issues related to delivery of life-saving AIDS medications in resource-constrained environments