Download or read book The Future of Public Health written by Committee for the Study of the Future of Public Health and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1988-01-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Nation has lost sight of its public health goals and has allowed the system of public health to fall into 'disarray'," from The Future of Public Health. This startling book contains proposals for ensuring that public health service programs are efficient and effective enough to deal not only with the topics of today, but also with those of tomorrow. In addition, the authors make recommendations for core functions in public health assessment, policy development, and service assurances, and identify the level of government--federal, state, and local--at which these functions would best be handled.

Download or read book Disease and Medicine in World History written by Sheldon Watts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-05 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disease and Medicine in World History is a concise introduction to diverse ideas about diseases and their treatment throughout the world. Drawing on case studies from ancient Egypt to present-day America, Asia and Europe, this survey discusses concepts of sickness and forms of treatment in many cultures. Sheldon Watts shows that many medical practices in the past were shaped as much by philosophers and metaphysicians as by university-trained doctors and other practitioners. Subjects covered include: Pharaonic Egypt and the pre-conquest New World the evolution of medical systems in the Middle East health and healing on the Indian subcontinent medicine and disease in China the globalization of disease in the modern world the birth and evolution of modern scientific medicine. This volume is a landmark contribution to the field of world history. It covers the principal medical systems known in the world, based on extensive original research. Watts raises questions about globalization in medicine and the potential impact of infectious diseases in the present day.

Download or read book The Deadly Truth written by Gerald N. Grob and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Deadly Truth chronicles the complex interactions between disease and the peoples of America from the pre-Columbian world to the present. Grob's ultimate lesson is stark but valuable: there can be no final victory over disease. The world in which we live undergoes constant change, which in turn creates novel risks to human health and life. We conquer particular diseases, but others always arise in their stead. In a powerful challenge to our tendency to see disease as unnatural and its virtual elimination as a real possibility, Grob asserts the undeniable biological persistence of disease. Diseases ranging from malaria to cancer have shaped the social landscape--sometimes through brief, furious outbreaks, and at other times through gradual occurrence, control, and recurrence. Grob integrates statistical data with particular peoples and places while giving us the larger patterns of the ebb and flow of disease over centuries. Throughout, we see how much of our history, culture, and nation-building was determined--in ways we often don't realize--by the environment and the diseases it fostered. The way in which we live has shaped, and will continue to shape, the diseases from which we get sick and die. By accepting the presence of disease and understanding the way in which it has physically interacted with people and places in past eras, Grob illuminates the extraordinarily complex forces that shape our morbidity and mortality patterns and provides a realistic appreciation of the individual, social, environmental, and biological determinants of human health.

Download or read book Disease Selection written by Roger Webber and published by CABI. This book was released on 2015-10-28 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disease Selection: The way disease changed the world explores the host-pathogen relationship and the way communicable diseases have evolved often to stay one step ahead of interventions. From sexually transmitted disease through to ancient and modern great plagues, parasites, food, zoonoses, climate change and populations, this book explores the way disappeared and emergent diseases have shaped our world just as much as nature has. This book provides key information and is a valuable resource for students, practitioners and researchers working in global health and anyone interested in understanding of the basis of disease.

Download or read book A History of Disease in Ancient Times written by Philip Norrie and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-06-25 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how bubonic plague and smallpox helped end the Hittite Empire, the Bronze Age in the Near East and later the Carthaginian Empire. The book will examine all the possible infectious diseases present in ancient times and show that life was a daily struggle for survival either avoiding or fighting against these infectious disease epidemics. The book will argue that infectious disease epidemics are a critical link in the chain of causation for the demise of most civilizations in the ancient world and that ancient historians should no longer ignore them, as is currently the case.

Download or read book Improving Food Safety Through a One Health Approach written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Globalization of the food supply has created conditions favorable for the emergence, reemergence, and spread of food-borne pathogens-compounding the challenge of anticipating, detecting, and effectively responding to food-borne threats to health. In the United States, food-borne agents affect 1 out of 6 individuals and cause approximately 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths each year. This figure likely represents just the tip of the iceberg, because it fails to account for the broad array of food-borne illnesses or for their wide-ranging repercussions for consumers, government, and the food industry-both domestically and internationally. A One Health approach to food safety may hold the promise of harnessing and integrating the expertise and resources from across the spectrum of multiple health domains including the human and veterinary medical and plant pathology communities with those of the wildlife and aquatic health and ecology communities. The IOM's Forum on Microbial Threats hosted a public workshop on December 13 and 14, 2011 that examined issues critical to the protection of the nation's food supply. The workshop explored existing knowledge and unanswered questions on the nature and extent of food-borne threats to health. Participants discussed the globalization of the U.S. food supply and the burden of illness associated with foodborne threats to health; considered the spectrum of food-borne threats as well as illustrative case studies; reviewed existing research, policies, and practices to prevent and mitigate foodborne threats; and, identified opportunities to reduce future threats to the nation's food supply through the use of a "One Health" approach to food safety. Improving Food Safety Through a One Health Approach: Workshop Summary covers the events of the workshop and explains the recommendations for future related workshops.

Download or read book The Burdens of Disease written by J. N. Hays and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sweeping approach to the history of disease, the author, a historian chronicles perceptions and responses to plague and pestilence over two thousand years of Western history. He frames disease as a multidimensional construct, situated at the intersection of history, politics, culture, and medicine, and rooted in mentalities and social relations as much as in biological conditions of pathology. He shows how diseases affect social and political change, reveal social tensions, and are mediated both within and outside the realm of scientific medicine.

Download or read book Health Civilization and the State written by Dorothy Porter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-10 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the social, economic and political issues of public health provision in historical perspective. It outlines the development of public health in Britain, Continental Europe and the United States from the ancient world through to the modern state. It includes discussion of: * pestilence, public order and morality in pre-modern times * the Enlightenment and its effects * centralization in Victorian Britain * localization of health care in the United States * population issues and family welfare * the rise of the classic welfare state * attitudes towards public health into the twenty-first century.

Download or read book A History of Population Health written by Johan P. Mackenbach and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award In A History of Population Health Johan P. Mackenbach offers a broad-sweeping study of the spectacular changes in people’s health in Europe since the early 18th century. Most of the 40 specific diseases covered in this book show a fascinating pattern of ‘rise-and-fall’, with large differences in timing between countries. Using a unique collection of historical data and bringing together insights from demography, economics, sociology, political science, medicine, epidemiology and general history, it shows that these changes and variations did not occur spontaneously, but were mostly man-made. Throughout European history, changes in health and longevity were therefore closely related to economic, social, and political conditions, with public health and medical care both making important contributions to population health improvement. Readers who would like to have a closer look at the quantitative data used in the trend graphs included in the book can find these it here.

Download or read book Plagues Poxes written by Dr. Alfred Jay Bollet, MD and published by Demos Medical Publishing. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since publication of the initial version of Plagues & Poxes in 1987, which had the optimistic subtitle "The Rise and Fall of Epidemic Disease," the rise of new diseases such as AIDS and the deliberate modification and weaponization of diseases such as anthrax have changed the way we perceive infectious disease. With major modifications to deal with this new reality, the acclaimed author of Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs has updated and revised this series of essays about changing disease patterns in history and some of the key events and people involved in them. It deals with the history of major outbreaks of disease - both infectious diseases such as plague and smallpox and noninfectious diseases - and shows how they are in many cases caused inadvertently by human actions, including warfare, commercial travel, social adaptations, and dietary modifications. To these must now be added discussion of the intentional spreading of disease by acts of bioterrorism, and the history and knowledge of those diseases that are thought to be potential candidates for intentional spread by bioterrorists. Among the many topics discussed are: How the spread of smallpox and measles among previously unexposed populations in the Americas, the introduction of malaria and yellow fever from Africa via the importation of slaves into the Western hemisphere, and the importation of syphilis to Europe all are related to the modern interchange of diseases such as AIDS. How the ever-larger populations in the cities of Europe and North America gave rise to "crowd diseases" such as polio by permitting the existence of sufficient numbers of non-immune people in sufficient numbers to keep the diseases from dying out. How the domestication of animals allowed diseases of animals to affect humans, or perhaps become genetically modified to become epidemic human diseases. Why the concept of deficiency diseases was not understood before the early twentieth century; disease, after all, was the presence of something abnormal, how could it be due to the absence of something? In fact, the first epidemic disease in human history probably was iron deficiency anemia. How changes in the availability and nature of specific foods have affected the size of population groups and their health throughout history. The introduction of potatoes to Ireland and corn to Europe, and the relationship between the modern technique of rice milling and beriberi, all illustrate the fragile nutritional state that results when any single vegetable crop is the main source of food. Why biological warfare is not a new phenomenon. There have been attempts to intentionally cause epidemic disease almost since the dawn of recorded history, including the contamination of wells and other water sources of armies and civilian populations; of course, the spread of smallpox to Native Americans during the French and Indian War is known to every schoolchild. With our increased technology, it is not surprising that we now have to deal with problems such as weaponized spores of anthrax.

Download or read book Disease and the Modern World 1500 to the Present Day written by Mark Harrison and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Mark Harrison's book illuminates the threats posed by infectious diseases since 1500. He places these diseases within an international perspective, and demonstrates the relationship between European expansion and changing epidemiological patterns. The book is a significant introduction to a fascinating subject.’ Gerald N. Grob, Rutgers State University In this lively and accessible book, Mark Harrison charts the history of disease from the birth of the modern world around 1500 through to the present day. He explores how the rise of modern nation-states was closely linked to the threat posed by disease, and particularly infectious, epidemic diseases. He examines the ways in which disease and its treatment and prevention, changed over the centuries, under the impact of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and with the advent of scientific medicine. For the first time, the author integrates the history of disease in the West with a broader analysis of the rise of the modern world, as it was transformed by commerce, slavery, and colonial rule. Disease played a vital role in this process, easing European domination in some areas, limiting it in others. Harrison goes on to show how a new environment was produced in which poverty and education rather than geography became the main factors in the distribution of disease. Assuming no prior knowledge of the history of disease, Disease and the Modern World provides an invaluable introduction to one of the richest and most important areas of history. It will be essential reading for all undergraduates and postgraduates taking courses in the history of disease and medicine, and for anyone interested in how disease has shaped, and has been shaped by, the modern world.

Download or read book Health and Disease in Human History written by Robert I. Rotberg and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays suggests the great extent to which exploration, settlement, agricultural growth, colonization, urbanization, and even human stature were influenced by environmental and epidemiological realities, as well as by political and economic responses to those realities.

Download or read book Sentinel for Health written by Elizabeth W. Etheridge and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the only history of its kind, Etheridge traces the development of the Centers for Disease Control from its inception as a malaria control unit during World War II through the mid-1980s . The eradication of smallpox, the struggle to identify an effective polio vaccine, the unraveling of the secrets of Legionnaires' disease, and the shock over the identification of the HIV virus are all chronicled here. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and source documents, Etheridge vividly recreates the vital decision-making incidents that shaped both the growth of this institution as well as the state of public health in this country for the last five decades. We follow the development of the institution as it was transformed by the will and the imagination of remarkable individuals such as Dr. Joseph Mountin, one of the first heads of the CDC. Often characterized as abrasive and impatient, Mountin pushed the CDC to become a vital player in eradicating the threat of communicable disease in the United States. Others such as Dr. Alexander Langmuir brought the expertise necessary to establish epidemiology as one of the primary functions of the CDC. Created to serve the states and to answer any call for help whether routine or extraordinary, the CDC is now widely recognized as one of the world's premier public health institutions.

Download or read book Ethical and Legal Considerations in Mitigating Pandemic Disease written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2007-07-08 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent public workshops and working group meetings, the Forum on Microbial Threats of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has examined a variety of infectious disease outbreaks with pandemic potential, including those caused by influenza (IOM, 2005) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (IOM, 2004). Particular attention has been paid to the potential pandemic threat posed by the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which is now endemic in many Southeast Asian bird populations. Since 2003, the H5N1 subtype of avian influenza has caused 185 confirmed human deaths in 11 countries, including some cases of viral transmission from human to human (WHO, 2007). But as worrisome as these developments are, at least they are caused by known pathogens. The next pandemic could well be caused by the emergence of a microbe that is still unknown, much as happened in the 1980s with the emergence of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and in 2003 with the appearance of the SARS coronavirus. Previous Forum meetings on pandemic disease have discussed the scientific and logistical challenges associated with pandemic disease recognition, identification, and response. Participants in these earlier meetings also recognized the difficulty of implementing disease control strategies effectively. Ethical and Legal Considerations in Mitigating Pandemic Disease: Workshop Summary as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop.

Download or read book Twelve Diseases that Changed Our World written by Irwin W. Sherman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2007-08-21 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers the history of twelve important diseases and addresses public health responses and societal upheavals. Chronicles the ways disease outbreaks shaped traditions and institutions of Western civilization. Explains the effects, causes, and outcomes from past epidemics. Describes a dozen diseases to show how disease control either was achieved or failed. Makes clear the interrelationship between diseases and history. Presents material in a compelling, clear, and jargon-free prose for a wide audience. Provides a picture of the best practices for dealing with disease outbreaks.

Download or read book Epidemics and Society written by Frank M. Snowden and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging study that illuminates the connection between epidemic diseases and societal change, from the Black Death to Ebola This sweeping exploration of the impact of epidemic diseases looks at how mass infectious outbreaks have shaped society, from the Black Death to today. In a clear and accessible style, Frank M. Snowden reveals the ways that diseases have not only influenced medical science and public health, but also transformed the arts, religion, intellectual history, and warfare. A multidisciplinary and comparative investigation of the medical and social history of the major epidemics, this volume touches on themes such as the evolution of medical therapy, plague literature, poverty, the environment, and mass hysteria. In addition to providing historical perspective on diseases such as smallpox, cholera, and tuberculosis, Snowden examines the fallout from recent epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, and Ebola and the question of the world’s preparedness for the next generation of diseases.

Download or read book The Story of the Human Body written by Daniel Lieberman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark book of popular science that gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years—with charts and line drawings throughout. “Fascinating.... A readable introduction to the whole field and great on the making of our physicality.”—Nature In this book, Daniel E. Lieberman illuminates the major transformations that contributed to key adaptations to the body: the rise of bipedalism; the shift to a non-fruit-based diet; the advent of hunting and gathering; and how cultural changes like the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions have impacted us physically. He shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning a paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease. And finally—provocatively—he advocates the use of evolutionary information to help nudge, push, and sometimes even compel us to create a more salubrious environment and pursue better lifestyles.