Health & Fitness : Health Care Issues

Regional health quality improvement coalitions have aimed to promote and coordinate improvement across various levels and types of health care organizations in particular geographic areas. However, the general factors involved in coalitions’ successes or failures are largely unknown. more...

Price: $20.00

Sexual health involves complex and interdependent relationships between biology, psychology and socio-historical-cultural factors. Late modernity has witnessed a growing critique of discourses which frame sex as deviance, or view sexuality and identity as essential and normative rather than as multiple and diverse, or which treat sex as a public health problem. Through understanding sexualities we can obtain a better understanding of individual and societal health, the diversity of sexualities and the importance of sexual expression on intimacy, relationships, identity, quality of life and health. This provides insights into the sexuality, experiences and rights of groups previously ignored or excluded. Papers in this special issue of Health Sociology Review* extend this knowledge and offer insights on aspects of sexuality, identity and health across the life span, focusing on diverse populations, groups and sexualities - addressing experiences and rights of groups often ignored in public health policy. more...

Price: $99.00

Safeguarding the Health Sector in Times of Macroeconomic Instability presents the results of an international initiative to document the effects of how health systems in the developing world have responded to macroeconomic austerity and adjustment measures. Are these systems flexible and resilient to changes or are they rigid? In which circumstances and under which conditions do health systems respond favourably or unfavourably? What are the success stories? Country studies from Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, India, Thailand, Mexico, and Colombia discuss lessons learned and identify policy measures for safeguarding the health sector. This book provides a fresh look at the relationships between. macroeconomic policy and interventions, health sector reform, and the health system in general, presenting new and detailed observations to inform policy choices within the health-care sector worldwide. It is unique in its focus on health systems and services (including financing, quality, accessibility, and utilization), rather than on health status. It will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students studying or active in health sciences and international development studies; professionals and practitioners in donor organizations, development organizations, and NGOs worldwide; and policy advisors and decision-makers in the health-care sector. more...

Price: $30.00

America's health care system is unraveling. Every day, millions of hard-working people struggle to find affordable medical treatment for themselves and their families—unable to pay for prescription drugs and regular checkups, let alone hospital visits. Some of these people end up losing money. Others end up losing something even more valuable: their health or even their lives. In this powerful work of original reportage, Jonathan Cohn travels across the United States—the only country in the developed world that does not guarantee access to medical care as a right of citizenship—to investigate why this crisis is happening and to see firsthand its impact on ordinary Americans. The stories he brings back are tragic and infuriating. In Boston, a heart attack victim becomes a casualty of emergency room overcrowding when she is turned away from the one hospital that could treat her. In South Central L.A., a security guard loses part of his vision when he can't find affordable treatment for his diabetes. In the middle of the prairie heartland, a retired meatpacker sells his house to pay for the medications that keep him and his aging wife alive. And, in a tiny village tucked into the Catskill mountains, a mother of three young children decides against a costly doctor's visit—and lets a deadly cancer go undetected—because her husband's high-tech job no longer provides health insurance. Passionate, illuminating, and often devastating, Sick interweaves these stories with clear-eyed reporting from Washington and takes us inside the medical industry to chronicle the decline of America's health care system—and lays bare the consequences any one of us could suffer if we don't replace it. more...

Price: $11.95

Independent living with smart technologies Smart Technology for Aging, Disability, and Independence: The State of the Science brings together current research and technological developments from engineering, computer science, and the rehabilitation sciences, detailing how its applications can promote continuing independence for older persons and those with disabilities. more...

Price: $95.95