Download or read book Mirage of Health written by René Dubos and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-02 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every man dreams of a utopia in which disease is conquered and the only thing left to die of is old age. In a study of the history and concepts of medicine, René Dubos, who is one of America’s most distinguished scientists, shows that such a utopia is neither possible nor desirable. Organized species such as ants have established a satisfactory equilibrium with their environment and suffer no great waves of disease or changes in their social structure. But man is essentially dynamic, his way of life constantly in flux from century to century. He experiments with synthetic products and changes his diet; he builds cities that breed rats and infection; he builds automobiles and factories which pollute the air; and he constructs radioactive bombs. As life becomes more comfortable and technology more complicated, new factors introduce new dangers; the ingredients for utopia are the agents of new disease. Dr. Dubois’ thesis may sound discouraging to a world looking for a cure-all in medical research, but actually it is affirmative—even hopeful. Once we accept the fact that “complete freedom from disease and from struggle is almost incompatible with the process of living,” we will know that our aspirations cannot be satisfied with health and the easy life. “The viewpoint expressed in Mirage of Health has now become a dominant one in our general culture and encompasses much of current concern with improving lifestyles related to health and promoting greater health consciousness among the public. In this sense, the discussion, although written twenty-five years ago, is perhaps more relevant today than it was then.”—DAVID MECHANIC, University Professor, René Dubos Professor of Behavioral Sciences, and Director of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research, Rutgers University

Download or read book Estrogen Action Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators And Women s Health Progress And Promise written by V Craig Jordan and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2013-05-27 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the evolution of the authors' ideas about estrogen action and its modulation by a new group of drugs called SERMs (Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators). The pioneering SERMs — tamoxifen and raloxifene — are known to have saved the lives of millions of women around the world and improved the health of millions more. Estrogen is the central hormone of women's health and reproduction. The book is a journey through 40 years of discovery and success in advancing women's health, with the prospect of improved innovation through medicinal chemistry for the future.

Download or read book Public Health Progress in the Pacific written by J.A.R. Miles and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1984-12-31 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes a status report on health conditions (including nutrition and freshwater supply) in the Pacific Island Nations. The report is based on investigations carried out over the past decade by the Pacific Science Association and includes ethnic, demographic, historic, economic, political, climatological and ecological aspects. As such, it will serve as an important decision-making tool with respect to criteria for future development, taking into account the very special carrying capacities of the island territories concerned.

Download or read book How Far Have We Come in Reducing Health Disparities written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-09-12 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the turn of the 21st century, several important reports and events designed to raise awareness of health disparities and to describe initial efforts to reduce health disparities took place. The Surgeon General's office released several reports that showed dramatic disparities in tobacco use and access to mental health services by race and ethnicity. The first real legislation focused on reducing health disparities was signed into law, creating the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities within the NIH. In 2001, the IOM released its landmark report, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, highlighting the importance of a focus on health care quality rather than a focus on only access and cost issues. Building upon these reports and events, the IOM held a workshop on April 8, 2010, that discussed progress to address health disparities and focused on the success of various federal initiatives to reduce health disparities. How Far Have We Come in Reducing Health Disparities? summarizes the workshop and explains the progress in the field since 2000.

Download or read book Vital Signs written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-08-26 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thousands of measures are in use today to assess health and health care in the United States. Although many of these measures provide useful information, their usefulness in either gauging or guiding performance improvement in health and health care is seriously limited by their sheer number, as well as their lack of consistency, compatibility, reliability, focus, and organization. To achieve better health at lower cost, all stakeholders - including health professionals, payers, policy makers, and members of the public - must be alert to what matters most. What are the core measures that will yield the clearest understanding and focus on better health and well-being for Americans? Vital Signs explores the most important issues - healthier people, better quality care, affordable care, and engaged individuals and communities - and specifies a streamlined set of 15 core measures. These measures, if standardized and applied at national, state, local, and institutional levels across the country, will transform the effectiveness, efficiency, and burden of health measurement and help accelerate focus and progress on our highest health priorities. Vital Signs also describes the leadership and activities necessary to refine, apply, maintain, and revise the measures over time, as well as how they can improve the focus and utility of measures outside the core set. If health care is to become more effective and more efficient, sharper attention is required on the elements most important to health and health care. Vital Signs lays the groundwork for the adoption of core measures that, if systematically applied, will yield better health at a lower cost for all Americans.

Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Download or read book Health People 2000 Progress Report For Environmental Health written by Healthy People 2000 (Group) and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 4 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Assessing Progress on the Institute of Medicine Report The Future of Nursing written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nurses make up the largest segment of the health care profession, with 3 million registered nurses in the United States. Nurses work in a wide variety of settings, including hospitals, public health centers, schools, and homes, and provide a continuum of services, including direct patient care, health promotion, patient education, and coordination of care. They serve in leadership roles, are researchers, and work to improve health care policy. As the health care system undergoes transformation due in part to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the nursing profession is making a wide-reaching impact by providing and affecting quality, patient-centered, accessible, and affordable care. In 2010, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released the report The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, which made a series of recommendations pertaining to roles for nurses in the new health care landscape. This current report assesses progress made by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/AARP Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action and others in implementing the recommendations from the 2010 report and identifies areas that should be emphasized over the next 5 years to make further progress toward these goals.

Download or read book Plagues and the Paradox of Progress written by Thomas J. Bollyky and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the news about the global decline of infectious diseases is not all good. Plagues and parasites have played a central role in world affairs, shaping the evolution of the modern state, the growth of cities, and the disparate fortunes of national economies. This book tells that story, but it is not about the resurgence of pestilence. It is the story of its decline. For the first time in recorded history, virus, bacteria, and other infectious diseases are not the leading cause of death or disability in any region of the world. People are living longer, and fewer mothers are giving birth to many children in the hopes that some might survive. And yet, the news is not all good. Recent reductions in infectious disease have not been accompanied by the same improvements in income, job opportunities, and governance that occurred with these changes in wealthier countries decades ago. There have also been unintended consequences. In this book, Thomas Bollyky explores the paradox in our fight against infectious disease: the world is getting healthier in ways that should make us worry. Bollyky interweaves a grand historical narrative about the rise and fall of plagues in human societies with contemporary case studies of the consequences. Bollyky visits Dhaka—one of the most densely populated places on the planet—to show how low-cost health tools helped enable the phenomenon of poor world megacities. He visits China and Kenya to illustrate how dramatic declines in plagues have affected national economies. Bollyky traces the role of infectious disease in the migrations from Ireland before the potato famine and to Europe from Africa and elsewhere today. Historic health achievements are remaking a world that is both worrisome and full of opportunities. Whether the peril or promise of that progress prevails, Bollyky explains, depends on what we do next. A Council on Foreign Relations Book

Download or read book Knowledge to Action written by Alonzo L. Plough and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN ESSENTIAL CONVERSATION FROM TODAY'S LEADING VOICES ON EFFECTING CHANGE IN HEALTH AND SOCIETY "The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has changed the conversation about health in the United States."--Jo Ivey Boufford, President, New York Academy of MedicineAssembled by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and featuring today's most prominent voices from diverse sectors, Knowledge to Action is a collection of short conversations focused on the idea of meaningful change - its definition, its impediments, and exploring how we can transition from research to action in health, well-being, and equity. Steeped in honesty and benefiting from the diverse experiences of an extraordinary assembly of academics, journalists, policymakers, public health practitioners, and researchers, this book offers provocative yet actionable perspectives that will benefit anyone who reads it.

Download or read book Annual Public Health Progress Report 1995 written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Worse Than the Disease written by Diana Barbara Dutton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-05-29 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The distance between medical and public priorities is exposed in four case studies that reveal the human choices governing scientific innnovation and explore the political, economic and social factors influencing those choices.

Download or read book The Future of Nursing written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Future of Nursing explores how nurses' roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in America's increasingly complex health system. At more than 3 million in number, nurses make up the single largest segment of the health care work force. They also spend the greatest amount of time in delivering patient care as a profession. Nurses therefore have valuable insights and unique abilities to contribute as partners with other health care professionals in improving the quality and safety of care as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted this year. Nurses should be fully engaged with other health professionals and assume leadership roles in redesigning care in the United States. To ensure its members are well-prepared, the profession should institute residency training for nurses, increase the percentage of nurses who attain a bachelor's degree to 80 percent by 2020, and double the number who pursue doctorates. Furthermore, regulatory and institutional obstacles-including limits on nurses' scope of practice-should be removed so that the health system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills, and knowledge in patient care. In this book, the Institute of Medicine makes recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.

Download or read book What Kind of Life written by Daniel Callahan and published by What Kind of Life. This book was released on 1995 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Setting Limits comes a challenging exploration of the proper goals of medicine in our rapidly changing society--a work destined to spark debate and influence policy for years to come.

Download or read book Monuments of Progress written by Claudia Agostoni and published by UNAM. This book was released on 2003 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A social and cultural history of public health in Mexico during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The book offers a fresh take on the history of medicine and public health by shifting away from the history of epidemic disease and heroic accounts of medical men and toward looking at public health in a broader social framework. It shows how new public health policies were instrumental in the 'modernisation' of Mexico. Adds to a small, but fast-growing body of literature, on the history of public health in Latin America and other developing areas of the world.

Download or read book Tracking Mental Health Outcomes written by Donald E. Wiger and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2001-03-30 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides therapists guidance on choosing the best outcomes- tracking methods and instruments. It explains how to integrate them into everyday clinical procedures and use the data they supply to improve the quality of care and comply with insurance and regulatory agency requirements. Both intraclient and normative approaches are described. Case studies illustrate how to perform and document outcomes assessment. Wiger is a practicing psychologist. Solberg teaches at the Minnesota School of Professional Psychology. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.

Download or read book VA Health Services Research Development Progress Reports written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: