America's Children


Book Description

America's Children is a comprehensive, easy-to-read analysis of the relationship between health insurance and access to care. The book addresses three broad questions: How is children's health care currently financed? Does insurance equal access to care? How should the nation address the health needs of this vulnerable population? America's Children explores the changing role of Medicaid under managed care; state-initiated and private sector children's insurance programs; specific effects of insurance status on the care children receive; and the impact of chronic medical conditions and special health care needs. It also examines the status of "safety net" health providers, including community health centers, children's hospitals, school-based health centers, and others and reviews the changing patterns of coverage and tax policy options to increase coverage of private-sector, employer-based health insurance. In response to growing public concerns about uninsured children, last year Congress voted to provide $24 billion over five years for new state insurance initiatives. This volume will serve as a primer for concerned federal policymakers and regulators, state agency officials, health plan decisionmakers, health care providers, children's health advocates, and researchers.




Raising Children : Emerging Needs, Modern Risks, and Social Responses


Book Description

Modern family life raises tough questions: Who should be responsible for children's daily care? How can their financial support be fairly allocated between parents? Should extended family members be paid for their help? Can women have full careers and also be good mothers? In Raising Children, leading scholars take on these questions and more in order to critically assess policy responses to the changing needs of the modern family. As parents struggle to balance professional and personal demands, choose schools for their children, and sort through constantly updated medical and psychological information, they need help from public officials who can make policies that realistically address childrearing's contemporary challenges. The insightful contributions in this volume provide an excellent starting point for understanding these thorny, multifaceted issues, skillfully framing the influences on child development, such as altered family dynamics, major life changes like immigration, and the role of schools and government in children's health. Adoption by same-sex couples, difficulties for immigrant children, the ADHD diagnosis controversy, and public intervention for at-risk children are only a few of the topics covered. With society in a constant state of flux, it is critically important that we assess our family and child policies to ensure that they provide families with the assistance they need. Drawing on the rich interdisciplinary work of the Berkeley Center for Child and Youth Policy, this is an eye-opening look at some of the biggest issues facing the family today, which are as complex as they are vital to address in a thoughtful way.







Modern Healthcare


Book Description




The New Health Economy


Book Description

The New Health Economy offers leaders a 360-degree look at health care politics, policy, providers, and personalization. Drawing from interviews with industry leaders, this guide brings together the best thinking from across the health care sector, setting the ground rules required to shape a new health care system as we emerge from the pandemic.




How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids


Book Description

"Get this for your pregnant friends, or yourself" (People): a hilariously candid account of one woman's quest to bring her post-baby marriage back from the brink, with life-changing, real-world advice. Recommended by Nicole Cliffe in Slate Featured in People Picks A Red Tricycle Best Baby and Toddler Parenting Book of the Year One of Mother magazine's favorite parenting books of the Year How Not To Hate Your Husband After Kids tackles the last taboo subject of parenthood: the startling, white-hot fury that new (and not-so-new) mothers often have for their mates. After Jancee Dunn had her baby, she found that she was doing virtually all the household chores, even though she and her husband worked equal hours. She asked herself: How did I become the 'expert' at changing a diaper? Many expectant parents spend weeks researching the best crib or safest car seat, but spend little if any time thinking about the titanic impact the baby will have on their marriage - and the way their marriage will affect their child. Enter Dunn, her well-meaning but blithely unhelpful husband, their daughter, and her boisterous extended family, who show us the ways in which outmoded family patterns and traditions thwart the overworked, overloaded parents of today. On the brink of marital Armageddon, Dunn plunges into the latest relationship research, solicits the counsel of the country's most renowned couples' and sex therapists, canvasses fellow parents, and even consults an FBI hostage negotiator on how to effectively contain an "explosive situation." Instead of having the same fights over and over, Dunn and her husband must figure out a way to resolve their larger issues and fix their family while there is still time. As they discover, adding a demanding new person to your relationship means you have to reevaluate -- and rebuild -- your marriage. In an exhilarating twist, they work together to save the day, happily returning to the kind of peaceful life they previously thought was the sole province of couples without children. Part memoir, part self-help book with actionable and achievable advice, How Not To Hate Your Husband After Kids is an eye-opening look at how the man who got you into this position in this first place is the ally you didn't know you had.




Access to Health Care in America


Book Description

Americans are accustomed to anecdotal evidence of the health care crisis. Yet, personal or local stories do not provide a comprehensive nationwide picture of our access to health care. Now, this book offers the long-awaited health equivalent of national economic indicators. This useful volume defines a set of national objectives and identifies indicatorsâ€"measures of utilization and outcomeâ€"that can "sense" when and where problems occur in accessing specific health care services. Using the indicators, the committee presents significant conclusions about the situation today, examining the relationships between access to care and factors such as income, race, ethnic origin, and location. The committee offers recommendations to federal, state, and local agencies for improving data collection and monitoring. This highly readable and well-organized volume will be essential for policymakers, public health officials, insurance companies, hospitals, physicians and nurses, and interested individuals.




Children's Health, the Nation's Wealth


Book Description

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 New Kid


Book Description

At fifteen years old, Humphrey has spent his life as the new kid, moving from town to town as his parents keep losing jobs. The latest move brings him to Haven, Florida, where his family rents a motel room for lack of money. Humphrey gradually makes his way into a circle of the local cool kids, but when his friendship with one handsome boy and the boy's mother leads to illicit and confusing sexual attractions, he begins to question the nature of his own desires, with perilous consequences. Humphrey's half-sister Gretchen escaped the family's itinerant lifestyle long ago, and is now graduating from Harvard College and pining for a Harvard boy who broke her heart. When fate offers Gretchen a chance to go abroad, both brother and sister find themselves with the opportunity to leave their problems behind and travel to Italy. But the siblings' Roman holiday takes a sinister turn when what was supposed to be a glamorous jaunt has fateful consequences. The New Kid is an account of love, family, sexual awakening, and the peculiarly dangerous twists life can take -- a deftly written novel from the acclaimed author of Glamorous Disasters.




The Affordable Care Act


Book Description

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to increase health insurance quality and affordability, lower the uninsured rate by expanding insurance coverage, and reduce the costs of healthcare overall. Along with sweeping change came sweeping criticisms and issues. This book explores the pros and cons of the Affordable Care Act, and explains who benefits from the ACA. Readers will learn how the economy is affected by the ACA, and the impact of the ACA rollout.