How can we all work together to eliminate the avoidable injustices that plague our health care system and society? Health is determined by far more than a person's choices and behaviors. Social and political conditions, economic forces, physical environments, institutional policies, health care system features, social relationships, risk behaviors, and genetic predispositions all contribute to physical and mental well-being. In America and around the world, many of these factors are derived from a lingering history of unequal opportunities and unjust treatment for people of color and other vulnerable communities. But they aren't the only ones who suffer because of these disparities-everyone is impacted by the factors that degrade health for the least advantaged among us. In Why Are Health Disparities Everyone's Problem? Dr. Lisa Cooper shows how we can work together to eliminate the injustices that plague our health care system and society. The book follows Cooper's journey from her childhood in Liberia, West Africa, to her thirty-year career working first as a clinician and then as a health equity researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Drawing on her experiences, it explores how differences in communication and the quality of relationships affect health outcomes. Through her work as the founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, it details the actions and policies needed to reduce and eliminate the conditions that are harming us all. Cooper reveals with compelling detail how health disparities are crippling our health care system and society, driving up health care costs, leading to adverse health outcomes and ultimately an enormous burden of human suffering. Why Are Health Disparities Everyone's Problem? demonstrates the ways in which everyone's health is interconnected, both within communities and across the globe. Cooper calls for a new kind of herd immunity, when a sufficiently high proportion of people, across race and social class, become immune to harmful social conditions through "vaccination" with solidarity among groups and opportunities created by institutional and societal practices and policies. By acknowledging and acting upon that interconnectedness, she believes everyone can help to create a healthier world. Features * Raises readers' health care inequities literacy through an approachable narrative with specific examples * Introduces the concept of "herd immunity" as it applies to building communal awareness of systemic injustices * Features sections that underscore key takeaways * Includes contributions from the world's leading minds through their research findings and quotations * Guides readers on what can be done at an individual level as a patient, public health professional, and community member * Includes inspiring stories of effective health equity studies and practices around the world, from Ghana's ADHINCRA Project addressing hypertension control to Baltimore's BRIDGE Study for depression in African Americans and the Maryland and Pennsylvania-based RICH LIFE Project for hypertension, diabetes, and other medical conditions Johns Hopkins Wavelengths In classrooms, field stations, and laboratories in Baltimore and around the world, the Bloomberg Distinguished Professors of Johns Hopkins University are opening the boundaries of our understanding of many of the world's most complex challenges. The Johns Hopkins Wavelengths book series brings readers inside their stories, illustrating how their pioneering discoveries benefit people in their neighborhoods and across the globe in artificial intelligence, cancer research, food systems' environmental impacts, health equity, science diplomacy, and other critical arenas of study. Through these compelling narratives, their insights will spark conversations from dorm rooms to dining rooms to boardrooms.

Studying archaeological evidence from sites covering over 200 kilometres of the banks of the Euphrates River, Lisa Cooper's excellent monograph explores the growth and development of human settlement in the Euphrates River Valley of Northern Syria during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages from circa 2700 to 1550 BC. Cooper focuses on the nature and development of the urban politics that existed in the area during these periods and highlights two principal inter-related characteristics of the Euphrates Valley: the study of specific aspects of Euphrates culture, such as the nature of urban secular and religious architecture, mortuary remains, and subsistence pursuits, to underline the unique character of this region during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages the striking resilience of its cultural traditions over many centuries despite the political instability and environmental degradation. Including studies on the tribal background of the populations, the economy, the unique geography of the Euphrates, the ethnic and social structure of its inhabitants, and the influences of states surrounding it, this is a unique and invaluable resource for all students of archaeology and ancient history.

Until recently, ancient cities established along the banks of the northern Euphrates River were widely regarded as a cultural backwater compared to the civilized, archaic states of southern Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. Archaeological investigations in recent decades, however, have shown that the northern Euphrates Valley possessed a complex and unique urban culture in its own right. Cities were densely inhabited, and many possessed extensive fortification systems, elite residences, prominent religious structures, well-crafted goods and impressive funerary monuments.
"Early Urbanism on the Syrian Euphrates" highlights the remarkably rich urban culture of the region, detailing the unique riverine environment of the region, in which a flexible economy based on a combination of agriculture, pastralism and hunting was successfully maintained and played an important role in sustaining the Euphrates' urban character over a long period of time. Cooper examines the persistent tribal background of the populations settled in this region, which prompted a high degree of social stability and heterarchical political relationships, also contributing to the cultural resilience of Early Bronze Euphrates urban communities. The combination of these key factors formed an interesting and enduring settlement history that provides an illuminating counterpoint to that witnessed in other regions of Mesopotamia and the rest of the Near East during the Early Bronze Age.

Witold Lutoslawski was one of the most important composers of the twentieth century, whose significance extends far beyond his native Poland. His vita is just as captivating as his compositionally path-breaking music. Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994) was one of the most important composers of the twentieth century. His significance extends far beyond his native Poland: his classical music was premiered by internationally renowned performers likethe LaSalle Quartet and Krystian Zimerman, and his symphonies, concertante, chamber, instrumental and vocal music are produced by the leading labels of the recording industry. Lutoslawski's vita is just as captivating as his compositionally path-breaking music. He lived through the Second World War and brutal German oppression of Poland, negotiated the challenges of Soviet influence and fluctuating local politics during Poland's post-war transition to communism, and finally strove for a new voice in the post-Stalin Thaw of the mid-1950s. Lutoslawski's Worlds is a landmark volume which looks at the multi-faceted spheres that informed the composer's life and works andrepresents a new departure in the study of his music. Throughout his life, he steered musicologists away from the connections between his extraordinary biography and concert music. He also sought to minimize scholarly attention to the many other spheres of creative activity - popular music, theatre music, film scoring, propaganda music, and educational music - that occupied him. In this volume, for the first time, the world's leading Lutoslawski scholars consider the full range of his musical output and the biographical, cultural and historical contexts in which those musics were created. It contends that all of Lutoslawski's worlds are equally worthy of study, because each represents an opportunity better to understand the life and music of a figure of paramount importance to the critical and cultural history of twentieth-century music.

In Awangarda, Lisa Cooper Vest explores how the Polish postwar musical avant-garde framed itself in contrast to its Western European counterparts. Rather than a rejection of the past, the Polish avant-garde movement emerged as a manifestation of national cultural traditions stretching back into the interwar years and even earlier into the nineteenth century. Polish composers, scholars, and political leaders wielded the promise of national progress to broker consensus across generational and ideological divides. Together, they established an avant-garde musical tradition that pushed against the limitations of strict chronological time and instrumentalized discourses of backwardness and forwardness to articulate a Polish road to modernity. This is a history that resists Cold War periodization, opening up new ways of thinking about nations and nationalism in the second half of the twentieth century.

At the height of her career, Bell journeyed into the heart of the Middle East retracing the steps of the ancient rulers who left tangible markers of their presence in the form of castles, palaces, mosques, tombs and temples. Among the many sites she visited were Ephesus, Binbirkilise and Carchemish in modern-day Turkey as well as Ukhaidir, Babylon and Najaf within the borders of modern Iraq. Lisa Cooper here explores Bell's achievements, emphasizing the tenacious, inquisitive side of her extraordinary personality, the breadth of her knowledge and her overall contribution to the archaeology of the Middle East. Featuring many of Bell's own photographs, this is a unique portrait of a remarkable life.