America spends more than twice as much for health care as any other nation. So why are Americans among the sickest people in the industrialized world? Public health experts Tom Farley and Deborah A. Cohen show that the answer does not lie in our medical care system but rather in the world around us. As they explain, the leading killers of our time fall almost entirely into two categories: injuries and chronic diseases such as heart disease, lung and breast cancer, diabetes, and stroke. For all its inspiring, high-tech cures, modern medicine is just not very effective at combating these illnesses. Our health, as Farley and Cohen explain, depends much less on medicine than on how we lead our lives. And as their surprising and illuminating examples show, our behavior and our health are in fact shaped by our everyday world-from the design of our cities to the rules that govern our organizations. Obesity, for example, has emerged as a major health threat because our environment makes it difficult to be physically active and because prepared high-calorie foods-from chips and candy bars to fast food and "food on the go"-saturate our surroundings. Though we'd like to believe that we could stay slim through individual self-discipline, our everyday world overwhelms our resolve. In similar ways, the world around us influences whether we live our lives in ways that increase or decrease our chances of dying from killers as wide-ranging as cancer and car crashes. In the last part of the book, Farley and Cohen remind us of once-controversial changes to our physical environment that have saved tens of thousands of lives and outline many other ways in which we can change our daily environment so we can all live longer and healthier. Prescription for a Healthy Nation is at once an exposé of how various industries influence our health for the worse, a paradigm-shifting argument about health and disease, and a positive blueprint for how to create a healthier society.

Introducing a new way of thinking about health: public health experts Tom Farley and Deborah A. Cohen show us that the antidote to our ever-growing rates of obesity and chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, lies not in our medical care system or in more health education but rather in how our environment affects our behavior.

Children's health has clearly improved over the past several decades. Significant and positive gains have been made in lowering rates of infant mortality and morbidity from infectious diseases and accidental causes, improved access to health care, and reduction in the effects of environmental contaminants such as lead. Yet major questions still remain about how to assess the status of children's health, what factors should be monitored, and the appropriate measurement tools that should be used. Children's Health, the Nation's Wealth: Assessing and Improving Child Health provides a detailed examination of the information about children's health that is needed to help policy makers and program providers at the federal, state, and local levels. In order to improve children's health-and, thus, the health of future generations-it is critical to have data that can be used to assess both current conditions and possible future threats to children's health. This compelling book describes what is known about the health of children and what is needed to expand the knowledge. By strategically improving the health of children, we ensure healthier future generations to come.

The United States is rapidly transforming into one of the most racially and ethnically diverse nations in the world. Groups commonly referred to as minorities-including Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, and Alaska Natives-are the fastest growing segments of the population and emerging as the nation's majority. Despite the rapid growth of racial and ethnic minority groups, their representation among the nation's health professionals has grown only modestly in the past 25 years. This alarming disparity has prompted the recent creation of initiatives to increase diversity in health professions. In the Nation's Compelling Interest considers the benefits of greater racial and ethnic diversity, and identifies institutional and policy-level mechanisms to garner broad support among health professions leaders, community members, and other key stakeholders to implement these strategies. Assessing the potential benefits of greater racial and ethnic diversity among health professionals will improve the access to and quality of healthcare for all Americans.

"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.