Download or read book Planetary Health written by Samuel Myers and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2020-08-13 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human health depends on the health of the planet. Earth’s natural systems—the air, the water, the biodiversity, the climate—are our life support systems. Yet climate change, biodiversity loss, scarcity of land and freshwater, pollution and other threats are degrading these systems. The emerging field of planetary health aims to understand how these changes threaten our health and how to protect ourselves and the rest of the biosphere. Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves provides a readable introduction to this new paradigm. With an interdisciplinary approach, the book addresses a wide range of health impacts felt in the Anthropocene, including food and nutrition, infectious disease, non-communicable disease, dislocation and conflict, and mental health. It also presents strategies to combat environmental changes and its ill-effects, such as controlling toxic exposures, investing in clean energy, improving urban design, and more. Chapters are authored by widely recognized experts. The result is a comprehensive and optimistic overview of a growing field that is being adopted by researchers and universities around the world. Students of public health will gain a solid grounding in the new challenges their profession must confront, while those in the environmental sciences, agriculture, the design professions, and other fields will become familiar with the human consequences of planetary changes. Understanding how our changing environment affects our health is increasingly critical to a variety of disciplines and professions. Planetary Health is the definitive guide to this vital field.

Download or read book Health of People Health of Planet and Our Responsibility written by Wael Al-Delaimy and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-05-13 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book not only describes the challenges of climate disruption, but also presents solutions. The challenges described include air pollution, climate change, extreme weather, and related health impacts that range from heat stress, vector-borne diseases, food and water insecurity and chronic diseases to malnutrition and mental well-being. The influence of humans on climate change has been established through extensive published evidence and reports. However, the connections between climate change, the health of the planet and the impact on human health have not received the same level of attention. Therefore, the global focus on the public health impacts of climate change is a relatively recent area of interest. This focus is timely since scientists have concluded that changes in climate have led to new weather extremes such as floods, storms, heat waves, droughts and fires, in turn leading to more than 600,000 deaths and the displacement of nearly 4 billion people in the last 20 years. Previous work on the health impacts of climate change was limited mostly to epidemiologic approaches and outcomes and focused less on multidisciplinary, multi-faceted collaborations between physical scientists, public health researchers and policy makers. Further, there was little attention paid to faith-based and ethical approaches to the problem. The solutions and actions we explore in this book engage diverse sectors of civil society, faith leadership, and political leadership, all oriented by ethics, advocacy, and policy with a special focus on poor and vulnerable populations. The book highlights areas we think will resonate broadly with the public, faith leaders, researchers and students across disciplines including the humanities, and policy makers.

Download or read book The Probiotic Planet written by Jamie Lorimer and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assesses a promising new approach to restoring the health of our bodies and our planet Most of us are familiar with probiotics added to milk or yogurt to improve gastrointestinal health. In fact, the term refers to any intervention in which life is used to manage life—from the microscopic, like consuming fermented food to improve gut health, to macro approaches such as biological pest control and natural flood management. In this ambitious and original work, Jamie Lorimer offers a sweeping overview of diverse probiotic approaches and an insightful critique of their promise and limitations. During our current epoch—the Anthropocene—human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment, leading to the loss of ecological abundance, diversity, and functionality. Lorimer describes cases in which scientists and managers are working with biological processes to improve human, environmental, and even planetary health, pursuing strategies that stand in contrast to the “antibiotic approach”: Big Pharma, extreme hygiene, and industrial agriculture. The Probiotic Planet focuses on two forms of “rewilding” occurring on vastly different scales. The first is the use of keystone species like wolves and beavers as part of landscape restoration. The second is the introduction of hookworms into human hosts to treat autoimmune disorders. In both cases, the goal is to improve environmental health, whether the environment being managed is planetary or human. Lorimer argues that, all too often, such interventions are viewed in isolation, and he calls for a rethinking of artificial barriers between science and policy. He also describes the stark and unequal geographies of the use of probiotic approaches and examines why these patterns exist. The author’s preface provides a thoughtful discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic as it relates to the probiotic approach. Informed by deep engagement with microbiology, immunology, ecology, and conservation biology as well as food, agriculture, and waste management, The Probiotic Planet offers nothing less than a new paradigm for collaboration between the policy realm and the natural sciences.

Download or read book Health Humanities written by P. Crawford and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-01-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first manifesto for Health Humanities worldwide. It sets out the context for this emergent and innovative field which extends beyond Medical Humanities to advance the inclusion and impact of the arts and humanities in healthcare, health and well-being.

Download or read book Pandemics Politics and Society written by Gerard Delanty and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is an important contribution to our understanding of global pandemics in general and Covid-19 in particular. It brings together the reflections of leading social and political scientists who are interested in the implications and significance of the current crisis for politics and society. The chapters provide both analysis of the social and political dimensions of the Coronavirus pandemic and historical contextualization as well as perspectives beyond the crisis. The volume seeks to focus on Covid-19 not simply as the terrain of epidemiology or public health, but as raising fundamental questions about the nature of social, economic and political processes. The problems of contemporary societies have become intensified as a result of the pandemic. Understanding the pandemic is as much a sociological question as it is a biological one, since viral infections are transmitted through social interaction. In many ways, the pandemic poses fundamental existential as well as political questions about social life as well as exposing many of the inequalities in contemporary societies. As the chapters in this volume show, epidemiological issues and sociological problems are elucidated in many ways around the themes of power, politics, security, suffering, equality and justice. This is a cutting edge and accessible volume on the Covid-19 pandemic with chapters on topics such as the nature and limits of expertise, democratization, emergency government, digitalization, social justice, globalization, capitalist crisis, and the ecological crisis. Contents Notes on Contributors Preface Gerard Delanty 1. Introduction: The Pandemic in Historical and Global Context Part 1 Politics, Experts and the State Claus Offe 2. Corona Pandemic Policy: Exploratory Notes on its ‘Epistemic Regime’ Stephen Turner 3. The Naked State: What the Breakdown of Normality Reveals Jan Zielonka 4. Who Should be in Charge of Pandemics? Scientists or Politicians? Jonathan White 5. Emergency Europe after Covid-19 Daniel Innerarity 6. Political Decision-Making in a Pandemic Part 2 Globalization, History and the Future Helga Nowotny 7. In AI We Trust: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Pushes us Deeper into Digitalization Eva Horn 8. Tipping Points: The Anthropocene and COVID-19 Bryan S. Turner 9. The Political Theology of Covid-19: a Comparative History of Human Responses to Catastrophes Daniel Chernilo 10. Another Globalisation: Covid-19 and the Cosmopolitan Imagination Frédéric Vandenberghe & Jean-Francois Véran 11. The Pandemic as a Global Total Social Fact Part 3 The Social and Alternatives Sylvia Walby 12. Social Theory and COVID: Including Social Democracy Donatella della Porta 13. Progressive Social Movements, Democracy and the Pandemic Sonja Avlijaš 14. Security for Whom? Inequality and Human Dignity in Times of the Pandemic Albena Azmanova 15. Battlegrounds of Justice: The Pandemic and What Really Grieves the 99% Index

Download or read book How to Prevent the Next Pandemic written by Bill Gates and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governments, businesses, and individuals around the world are thinking about what happens after the COVID-19 pandemic. Can we hope to not only ward off another COVID-like disaster but also eliminate all respiratory diseases, including the flu? Bill Gates, one of our greatest and most effective thinkers and activists, believes the answer is yes. The author of the #1 New York Times best seller How to Avoid a Climate Disaster lays out clearly and convincingly what the world should have learned from COVID-19 and what all of us can do to ward off another catastrophe like it. Relying on the shared knowledge of the world’s foremost experts and on his own experience of combating fatal diseases through the Gates Foundation, Gates first helps us understand the science of infectious diseases. Then he shows us how the nations of the world, working in conjunction with one another and with the private sector, how we can prevent a new pandemic from killing millions of people and devastating the global economy. Here is a clarion call—strong, comprehensive, and of the gravest importance.

Download or read book Breaking the Silos for Planetary Health written by Nicole de Paula and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-10-16 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book translates the latest theoretical perspectives on the emerging field of Planetary Health Studies into the practical reality of global political decision makers. It builds on the scientific data on the impacts of environmental change on human health to propose practical methods for operationalizing planetary health. The book maps opportunities for decision makers to break institutional silos and engage with bottom-up approaches that can transform planetary health from a global idea into a local reality. The analysis frames human health in the Anthropocene, an era in which humans have become the most powerful force affecting global ecosystems, and reveals new existential risks for humankind.Departing from ongoing multilateral efforts to promote sustainability, the author’s analysis places the agenda of planetary health on the desk of political decision makers, still underrepresented at planetary health gatherings. Given the pressing need to implement sustainable development policies, the book presents planetary health as an overarching framework for global policy targets, notably the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and the post-2020 biodiversity framework under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The book is timely in offering a concrete road map for practitioners and researchers interested in transforming the concept of planetary health into reality. With a collection of success stories, the analysis dwells on tools for community engagement, opportunities for health professionals training, gender empowerment, digital health, and innovative ways to enhance human well-being on a changing planet.

Download or read book The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021 written by Ed Yong and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times best-selling author and renowned science journalist Ed Yong compiles the best science and nature writing published in 2020. "The stories I have chosen reflect where I feel the field of science and nature writing has landed, and where it could go," Ed Yong writes in his introduction. "They are often full of tragedy, sometimes laced with wonder, but always deeply aware that science does not exist in a social vacuum. They are beautiful, whether in their clarity of ideas, the elegance of their prose, or often both." The essays in this year's Best American Science and Nature Writing brought clarity to the complexity and bewilderment of 2020 and delivered us necessary information during a global pandemic. From an in-depth look at the moment of the virus's outbreak, to a harrowing personal account of lingering Covid symptoms, to a thoughtful analysis on how the pandemic will impact the environment, these essays, as Yong says, "synthesize, evaluate, dig, unveil, and challenge," imbuing a pivotal moment in history with lucidity and elegance. THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING 2021 INCLUDES - SUSAN ORLEAN - EMILY RABOTEAU - ZEYNEP TUFEKCI - HELEN OUYANG - HEATHER HOGAN BROOKE JARVIS - SARAH ZHANG and others

Download or read book Living with an Infected Planet written by Elke Krasny and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2023-05-31 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: »We must declare war on the virus,« stated UN chief António Guterres on March 13, 2020, just two days after the WHO had characterized the outbreak of the novel Covid-19 virus as a pandemic. Elke Krasny introduces feminist worry in order then to develop a feminist cultural theory on pandemic frontline ontologies, which give rise to militarized care essentialism and forced heroism. Feminist hope is gained through the attentive reading of feminist recovery plans and their novel care feminism, with the latter's insistence that recovery from patriarchy is possible.

Download or read book Migration in the Time of COVID 19 Comparative Law and Policy Responses written by Jaya Ramji-Nogales and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2021-07-28 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Psychology of Covid 19 Building Resilience for Future Pandemics written by Joel Vos and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2021-01-13 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Psychology of Covid-19 explores how the coronavirus is giving rise to a new order in our personal lives, societies and politics. Rooted in systematic research on Covid-19 and previous pandemics, including SARS, Ebola, HIV and the Spanish Flu, this book describes how Covid-19 has impacted a broad range of domains, including self-perception, lifestyle, politics, mental health, media, and meaning in life. Building on this, the book then sets out how we can improve our psychological and social resilience, to safeguard ourselves against the psychological effects of future pandemics.

Download or read book Mothers Mothering and COVID 19 written by Fiona J Green and published by Demeter Press. This book was released on 2021-02-28 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been little public discussion on the devastating impact of Covid-19 on mothers, or a public acknowledgement that mothering is frontline work in this pandemic. This collection of 45 chapters and with 70 contributors is the first to explore the impact of the pandemic on mothers' care and wage labour in the context of employment, schooling, communities, families, and the relationships of parents and children. With a global perspective and from the standpoint of single, partnered, queer, racialized, Indigenous, economically disadvantaged, disabled, and birthing mothers, the volume examines the increasing complexity and demands of childcare, domestic labour, elder care, and home schooling under the pandemic protocols; the intricacies and difficulties of performing wage labour at home; the impact of the pandemic on mothers' employment; and the strategies mothers have used to manage the competing demands of care and wage labour under COVID-19. By way of creative art, poetry, photography, and creative writing along with scholarly research, the collection seeks to make visible what has been invisibilized and render audible what has been silenced: the care and crisis of motherwork through and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Download or read book Fevered Planet written by John Vidal and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-06-22 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely and urgent investigation from John Vidal, Environment Editor of the Guardian for nearly thirty years, into how the destruction of nature is releasing disease into our societies 'Urgent, fascinating and essential' GEORGE MONBIOT 'A searing, vital work' BETTANY HUGHES Covid-19, mpox, bird flu, SARS, HIV, AIDS, Ebola; we are living in the Age of Pandemics – one that we have created. As the climate crisis reaches a fever pitch and ecological destruction continues unabated, we are just beginning to reckon with the effects of environmental collapse on our global health. Fevered Planet exposes how the way we farm, what we eat, the places we travel to and the scientific experiments we conduct create the perfect conditions for deadly new diseases to emerge and spread faster and further than ever. Drawing on the latest scientific research and decades of reporting from more than 100 countries, former Guardian environment editor John Vidal takes us into deep, disappearing forests in Gabon and the Congo, valleys scorched by wildfire near Lake Tahoe and our densest, polluted cities to show how closely human, animal and plant diseases are now intertwined with planetary destruction. He calls for an urgent transformation in our relationship with the natural world, and expertly outlines how to make that change possible.

Download or read book Sustainable Diets written by Leslie Pray and published by National Academy Press. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the many benefits of the U.S. food system is a safe, nutritious, and consistent food supply. However, the same system also places significant strain on land, water, air, and other natural resources. A better understanding of the food-environment synergies and trade-offs associated with the U.S. food system would help to reduce this strain. Many experts would like to use that knowledge to develop dietary recommendations on the basis of environmental as well as nutritional considerations. But identifying and quantifying those synergies and trade-offs, let alone acting on them, is a challenge in and of itself. The difficulty stems in part from the reality that experts in the fields of nutrition, agricultural science, and natural resource use often do not regularly collaborate with each other, with the exception of some international efforts. "Sustainable Diets" is the summary of a workshop convened by The Institute of Medicine's Food Forum and Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine in May 2013 to engender dialogue between experts in nutrition and experts in agriculture and natural resource sustainability and to explore current and emerging knowledge on the food and nutrition policy implications of the increasing environmental constraints on the food system. Experts explored the relationship between human health and the environment, including the identification and quantification of the synergies and trade-offs of their impact. This report explores the role of the food price environment and how environmental sustainability can be incorporated into dietary guidance and considers research priorities, policy implications, and drivers of consumer behaviors that will enable sustainable food choices.

Download or read book Precision Community Health written by Bechara Choucair and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Bechara Choucair was a young doctor, he learned an important lesson: treating a patient for hypothermia does little good if she has to spend the next night out in the freezing cold. As health commissioner of Chicago, he was determined to address the societal causes of disease and focus the city’s resources on its most vulnerable populations. That targeted approach has led to dramatic successes, such as lowering rates of smoking, teen pregnancy, breast cancer mortalities, and other serious ills. In Precision Community Health, Choucair shows how those successes can be replicated and expanded around the country. The key is to use advanced technologies to identify which populations are most at risk for specific health threats and avert crises before they begin. Big data makes precision community health possible. But in our increasingly complex world, we also need new strategies for developing effective coalitions, media campaigns, and policies. This book showcases four innovations that move public health departments away from simply dispensing medical care and toward supporting communities to achieve true well-being. The approach Choucair pioneered in Chicago requires broadening our thinking about what constitutes public health. It is not simply about access to a doctor, but access to decent housing, jobs, parks, food, and social support. It also means acknowledging that a one-size-fits-all strategy may exacerbate inequities. By focusing on those most in need, we create an agenda that is simultaneously more impactful and more achievable. The result is a wholesale change in the way public health is practiced and in the well-being of all our communities.

Download or read book COVID 19 and Similar Futures written by Gavin J. Andrews and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-06-19 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a critical response to the COVID-19 pandemic showcasing the full range of issues and perspectives that the discipline of geography can expose and bring to the table, not only to this specific event, but to others like it that might occur in future. Comprised of almost 60 short (2500 word) easy to read chapters, the collection provides numerous theoretical, empirical and methodological entry points to understanding the ways in which space, place and other geographical phenomenon are implicated in the crisis. Although falling under a health geography book series, the book explores the centrality and importance of a full range of biological, material, social, cultural, economic, urban, rural and other geographies. Hence the book bridges fields of study and sub-disciplines that are often regarded as separate worlds, demonstrating the potential for future collaboration and cross-disciplinary inquiry. Indeed book articulates a diverse but ultimately fulsome and multiscalar geographical approach to the major health challenge of our time, bringing different types of scholarship together with common purpose. The intended audience ranges from senior undergraduate students and graduate students to professional academics in geography and a host of related disciplines. These scholars might be interested in COVID-19 specifically or in the book’s broad disciplinary approach to infectious disease more generally. The book will also be helpful to policy-makers at various levels in formulating responses, and to general readers interested in learning about the COVID-19 crisis.

Download or read book Will Big Business Destroy Our Planet written by Peter Dauvergne and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walmart. Coca-Cola. BP. Toyota. The world economy runs on the profits of transnational corporations. Politicians need their backing. Non-profit organizations rely on their philanthropy. People look to their brands for meaning. And their power continues to rise. Can these companies, as so many are now hoping, provide the solutions to end the mounting global environmental crisis? Absolutely, the CEOs of big business are telling us: the commitment to corporate social responsibility will ensure it happens voluntarily. Peter Dauvergne challenges this claim, arguing instead that corporations are still doing far more to destroy than protect our planet. Trusting big business to lead sustainability is, he cautions, unwise — perhaps even catastrophic. Planetary sustainability will require reining in the power of big business, starting now.