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"Since the 1970s, health professionals, researchers, governments, advocacy groups, and commercial interests have invested in the pursuit of something called 'sexual health'. Programs were launched, organizations founded, initiatives funded, products sold-and yet, no book before this one asks: What does it mean to be sexually healthy? When did people conceive of a form of health called sexual health? And how did it become the gateway to addressing a host of social harms and the reimagining of private desires and public dreams? Offering an entryway into the distinctive worlds of sexual health, this book traverses the distance from the research and treatment domains where sexual health is assessed, measured, and improved to the "sex expos" that invite attendees to "leave their inhibitions at the door and explore today's top intimacy products" and beyond. Sexual health encompasses wildly disparate agendas and speaks to innumerable concerns-from sexual dysfunction to sexual violence, from HIV prevention to reproductive freedom, to the practicalities of sexual contact during a global pandemic. Rather than a thing apart, sexual health is intertwined with nearly every conceivable topical debate-and more of them every day. Through his wide-ranging exploration, Steven Epstein provides the critical tools needed to bring into focus the different faces of sexual health and parse the debates that swirl around it"--
This is the story of one of the most far-reaching human endeavors in history: the quest for mental well-being. From its origins in the eighteenth century to its wide scope in the early twenty-first, this search for emotional health and welfare has cost billions. In the name of mental health, millions around the world have been tranquilized, institutionalized, psycho-analyzed, sterilized, lobotomized and even euthanized. Yet at the dawn of the new millennium, reported rates of depression and anxiety are unprecedentedly high. Drawing on years of field research, Ian Dowbiggin argues that if the quest for emotional well-being has reached a crisis point in the twenty-first century, it is because mass society is enveloped by cultures of therapism and consumerism, which increasingly advocate bureaucratic and managerial approaches to health and welfare.
What we eat, how we eat, where we eat, and when we eat are deeply embedded cultural practices. Eating is also related to how we medicate. The multimillion-dollar diet industry offers advice on how to eat for a better body and longer life, and avoiding harmful foods (or choosing healthy ones) is considered separate from consuming medicine another multimillion-dollar industry. In contrast, most traditional medical systems view food as inseparable from medicine and regard medicinal foods as the front line of healing. Drawing on medical texts and food therapy practices from around the world and throughout history, Nancy N. Chen locates old and new crossovers between food and medicine in different social and cultural contexts. The consumption of spices, sugar, and salt was once linked to specific healing properties, and trade in these commodities transformed not just the political economy of Europe, Asia, and the New World but local tastes and food practices as well. Today's technologies are rapidly changing traditional attitudes toward food, enabling the cultivation of new admixtures, such as nutraceuticals and genetically modified food, that link food to medicine in novel ways. Chen considers these developments against the evolving food regimes of the diet industry in order to build a framework for understanding diet as individual practice, social prescription, and political formation.
Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health explores the complex, multifaceted role of faith traditions in public health throughout history, today, and in the future. The volume brings together leading scholars in the social sciences, public health, and religion to address the important yet often neglected role of religious institutions in health and development efforts around the globe.
Debates over health care have focused for so long on economics that the proper goals for medicine seem to be taken for granted; yet problems in health care stem as much from a lack of agreement about the goals and priorities of medicine as from the way systems function. This book asks basic questions about the purposes and ends of medicine and shows that the answers have practical implications for future health care delivery, medical research, and the education of medical students. The Hastings Center coordinated teams of physicians, nurses, public health experts, philosophers, theologians, politicians, health care administrators, social workers, and lawyers in fourteen countries to explore these issues. In this volume, they articulate four basic goals of medicine — prevention of disease, relief of suffering, care of the ill, and avoidance of premature death — and examine them in light of the cultural, political, and economic pressures under which medicine functions. In reporting these findings, the contributors touch on a wide range of diverse issues such as genetic technology, Chinese medicine, care of the elderly, and prevention and public health. The Goals of Medicine clearly demonstrates the importance of clarifying the purposes of medicine before attempting to change the economic and organizational systems. It warns that without such examination, any reform efforts may be fruitless.
Asserting what most Americans already suspect -- that corporate-based managed care places profits over patient care -- theologian Abigail Rian Evans points out that medical experts have reduced health care to medical treatment under arrangements with health insurance plans and HMOs. Her reasoned, practical alternative engages Christian theology, proposing a much broader concept of health care. An important contribution to a critical discussion.
​Health care is a very important component of the American economy. The United States Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) put the 2008 direct health care expenditures at about $2.34 trillion, or about 16.2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), or an average of $7,681 spent for every man, woman, and child in the country. Health care cost increases have caused very serious problems that threaten to bankrupt the system, providers, employers, and the families that pay the costs that their health insurance plans do not cover. Additionally, cost increases have reduced access to health care services, adversely affected the quality of care, and resulted in avoidable illnesses, premature deaths, and in health disparities based on race, ethnicity, and income. Consequently, health care reform has continuously been on the public and governmental agendas. It is out of this environment that several reform plans, including the 1993 Health Security Act, and the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), were launched. This book examines the ideological, social, cultural, economic, and several other factors that dictate the various measures and approaches employed to tackle the perceived problems. The book has an index, tables, charts and figures, lists of major terms, and review questions for each chapter. This book will appeal to students in Master of Health Administration (MHA), Master of Public Health (MPH), Master of Public Administration (MPA), Master of Science in Nursing (MSN), health certificate programs, and junior and senior level undergraduate students in political science, public administration, public health, and public policy. In addition to serving as a core text for health policy and administration classes, the book will serve as a supplementary text for graduate level courses.
This book examines the quest to promote the health and vigour of individuals and populations in Denmark and England. Based on a detailed account of obesity control and mental recovery programs, the book shows that these interventions are supported by a form of optimistic vitalism that seems to have no political limitations.