"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.
Bioterrorism, drug-resistant disease, transmission of disease by global travel . . . there's no shortage of challenges facing America's public health officials. Men and women preparing to enter the field require state-of-the-art training to meet these increasing threats to the public health. But are the programs they rely on provide the high caliber professional training they require? Who Will Keep the Public Healthy? provides an overview of the past, present, and future of public health education, assessing its readiness to provide the training and education needed to prepare men and women to face 21st century challenges. Advocating an ecological approach to public health, the Institute of Medicine examines the role of public health schools and degree-granting programs, medical schools, nursing schools, and government agencies, as well as other institutions that foster public health education and leadership. Specific recommendations address the content of public health education, qualifications for faculty, availability of supervised practice, opportunities for cross-disciplinary research and education, cooperation with government agencies, and government funding for education. Eight areas of critical importance to public health education in the 21st century are examined in depth: informatics, genomics, communication, cultural competence, community-based participatory research, global health, policy and law, and public health ethics. The book also includes a discussion of the policy implications of its ecological framework.
This book, named one of Booklist's Top 10 books on sustainability in 2014, is the first to offer a comprehensive examination of the environmental health movement, which unlike many parts of the environmental movement, focuses on ways toxic chemicals and other hazardous agents in the environment effect human health and well-being. Born in 1978 when Lois Gibbs organized her neighbors to protest the health effects of a toxic waste dump in Love Canal, New York, the movement has spread across the United States and throughout the world. By placing human health at the center of its environmental argument, this movement has achieved many victories in community mobilization and legislative reform. In The Rise of the U.S. Environmental Health Movement, environmental health expert Kate Davies describes the movement’s historical, ideological, and cultural roots and analyzes its strategies and successes.
"Supporting a Movement for Health and Health Equity" is the summary of a workshop convened in December 2013 by the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on the Promotion of Health Equity and the Elimination of Health Disparities and the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement to explore the lessons that may be gleaned from social movements, both those that are health-related and those that are not primarily focused on health. Participants and presenters focused on elements identified from the history and sociology of social change movements and how such elements can be applied to present-day efforts nationally and across communities to improve the chances for long, healthy lives for all. The idea of movements and movement building is inextricably linked with the history of public health. Historically, most movements - including, for example, those for safer working conditions, for clean water, and for safe food - have emerged from the sustained efforts of many different groups of individuals, which were often organized in order to protest and advocate for changes in the name of such values as fairness and human rights. The purpose of the workshop was to have a conversation about how to support the fragments of health movements that roundtable members believed they could see occurring in society and in the health field. Recent reports from the National Academies have highlighted evidence that the United States gets poor value on its extraordinary investments in health - in particular, on its investments in health care - as American life expectancy lags behind that of other wealthy nations. As a result, many individuals and organizations, including the Healthy People 2020 initiative, have called for better health and longer lives.
Religious, political, social, and health reform earmarked the Progressive Era. The era's health reform movement—like today's clean living movement—saw campaigns against alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and sexuality. It included crusades for exercise, vegetarian diets, and alternative health care and concerns about eugenics and new diseases. Covering the years leading up to the Progressive Era through the 1920s, this book provides entries on the central figures, events, crusades, legislation, publications and terms of the health reform movements, while a detailed timeline ties health reform to political, social, and religious movements. A valuable resource for scholars, students, and laymen interested in earlier health reform movements.
Barely a day goes by without news of the latest public health threat from the American media. Some of us are told we live in a "cancer cluster"-an area with a disproportionate number of cancer deaths. During the summer months, those who live in or near urban areas are bombarded with daily smog measurements and air pollution alerts. City water supplies are frequently called health hazards. At times, it seems as though virtually everything we eat and drink is denounced as bad for us by some "public health expert." Our cars burn too much gasoline; we own too many firearms; we are too fat; some of us are too skinny. Americans today are living longer than they ever have before. Why the almost daily announcements of new public health threats and proclamations of impending crises? Bennett and DiLorenzo address this question and others here. They begin by examining the large public health bureaucracy, its preoccupation with expanding governmental programs, and its concern with political issues that too often have little to do with improving public health. Then they trace the evolution of the American public health movement from its founding after the Civil War to the 1950s. They describe the transformation of public health's focus from the eradication of disease to social policy as a by-product of the 1960s. Bennett and DiLorenzo catalogue the "radicalization" of the public health movement by discussing its numerous political initiatives. They include case studies of the politicization of the public health movement in America. The authors reveal various methods of statistical manipulation that certain public health researchers use to "cook the data" in order to achieve politically correct results. A final chapter discusses the implications of the transformation of public health from pathology to politics. This vigorously argued analysis sees the public health movement as claiming expertise on virtually every social issue, from poverty to human rights. Students of public policy and public health officials, along with readers interested in public health issues, will find this absorbing reading.
