Public Health and Society: Current Issues analyzes current public health issues in a historical context, while relating them to individual lives. The text emphasizes the social determinants of health, social justice, and the climate crisis, by leading off with these important topics and then integrates them where appropriate throughout the text. Subsequent chapters explore gun violence, the opioid epidemic, tobacco, vaping, and alcohol use, COVID-19, mental health, environmental health chronic disease, emerging and reemerging diseases, and more. Key features “In the News” articles bring public health topics up-to-date and underscore their modern relevance. Personal vignettes humanize public health issues and make them resonate for readers. Short histories put current issues into historical context, for example, the opioid epidemic (Ch. 5) and alcohol and tobacco use (Ch.6) Comprehensive and up-to-date data and references are included throughout the text. Navigate eBook acc

Reviewing developments in public health using a critical, historical and comparative analytical framework, this text links public health explicitly to sociological theory, to demonstrate the relationship between health care and the social structures that underpin the provision of health services.

Many serious public health problems confront the world in the new millennium. Anthropology and Public Health examines the critical role of anthropology in four crucial public health domains: (1) anthropological understandings of public health problems such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, and diabetes; (2) anthropological design of public health interventions in areas such as tobacco control and elder care; (3) anthropological evaluations of public health initiatives such as Safe Motherhood and polio eradication; and (4) anthropological critiques of public health policies, including neoliberal health care reforms. As the volume demonstrates, anthropologists provide crucial understandings of public health problems from the perspectives of the populations in which the problems occur. On the basis of such understandings, anthropologists may develop and implement interventions to address particular public health problems, often working in collaboration with local participants. Anthropologists also work as evaluators, examining the activities of public health institutions and the successes and failures of public health programs. Anthropological critiques may focus on major international public health agencies and their workings, as well as public health responses to the threats of infectious disease and other disasters. Through twenty-four compelling case studies from around the world, the volume provides a powerful argument for the imperative of anthropological perspectives, methods, information, and collaboration in the understanding and practice of public health. Written in plain English, with significant attention to anthropological methodology, the book should be required reading for public health practitioners, medical anthropologists, and health policy makers. It should also be of interest to those in the behavioral and allied health sciences, as well as programs of public health administration, planning, and management. As the single most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of anthropology's role in public health, this volume will inform debates about how to solve the world's most pressing public health problems at a critical moment in human history.

Students and practitioners will find Public Health for an Aging Society an invaluable resource both in the workplace and the classroom.

"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.

Praise for Public Health and Social Justice "This compilation unifies ostensibly distant corners of our broad discipline under the common pursuit of health as an achievable, non-negotiable human right. It goes beyond analysis to impassioned suggestions for moving closer to the vision of health equity." —Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, Kolokotrones University Professor and chair, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School; co-founder, Partners In Health "This superb book is the best work yet concerning the relationships between public health and social justice." —Howard Waitzkin, MD, PhD, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico "This book gives public health professionals, researchers and advocates the essential knowledge they need to capture the energy that social justice brings to our enterprise." —Nicholas Freudenberg, DrPH, Distinguished Professor of Public Health, the City University of New York School of Public Health at Hunter College "The breadth of topics selected provides a strong overview of social justice in medicine and public health for readers new to the topic." —William Wiist, DHSc, MPH, MS, senior scientist and head, Office of Health and Society Studies, Interdisciplinary Health Policy Institute, Northern Arizona University "This book is a tremendous contribution to the literature of social justice and public health." —Catherine Thomasson, MD, executive director, Physicians for Social Responsibility "This book will serve as an essential reference for students, teachers and practitioners in the health and human services who are committed to social responsibility." —Shafik Dharamsi, PhD, faculty of medicine, University of British Columbia

Public Health and Society links public health explicitly to sociological theory, in order to demonstrate the relationship between health care and the social structures that underpin the provision of health services. The book reviews developments in public health using a critical, historical and comparative analytical framework, and includes topical areas such as health inequalities, social diversity, social exclusion units, care in the community and media constructions of health. It also provides practical examples combined with current, research-based sociological studies explaining some of the key social issues affecting the take up and utilisation of health care.