Global Health Studies


Book Description

A global view of health offers a richer understanding of ways of measuring, improving and sustaining health both in individual national settings and in the context of a strongly interconnected world. This book draws on social scientific insights and explanations to examine trends in global health. Moving beyond an epidemiological analysis, the authors use a social determinants framework and life course approaches to offer a critical introduction to the study of global health. Through individual chapters focusing on topics such as health policy, global governance, health systems and health-related protests, the authors present the scope of global health studies and introduce readers to broader ranging issues such as globalization and political forces. Key themes such as power, inequality and inequity - and their impact on health on a global scale - recur throughout the book. International examples and case studies are used to illustrate the discussion, which is further supported by opportunities for reflection and further reading. This book will be an important resource for students studying global health and will have broad relevance to those undertaking health, health-related and allied health professional courses.




When People Come First


Book Description

A people-centered approach to global health When People Come First critically assesses the expanding field of global health. It brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to address the medical, social, political, and economic dimensions of the global health enterprise through vivid case studies and bold conceptual work. The book demonstrates the crucial role of ethnography as an empirical lantern in global health, arguing for a more comprehensive, people-centered approach. Topics include the limits of technological quick fixes in disease control, the moral economy of global health science, the unexpected effects of massive treatment rollouts in resource-poor contexts, and how right-to-health activism coalesces with the increased influence of the pharmaceutical industry on health care. The contributors explore the altered landscapes left behind after programs scale up, break down, or move on. We learn that disease is really never just one thing, technology delivery does not equate with care, and biology and technology interact in ways we cannot always predict. The most effective solutions may well be found in people themselves, who consistently exceed the projections of experts and the medical-scientific, political, and humanitarian frameworks in which they are cast. When People Come First sets a new research agenda in global health and social theory and challenges us to rethink the relationships between care, rights, health, and economic futures.




Case Studies in Global Health


Book Description

One of the greatest human accomplishments has been the spectacular improvement in health since 1950, particularly in developing countries. With death rates falling steadily, more progress was made in the health of populations in the past half-century than in many earlier millennia. A careful look at that success can yield important lessons about how to tackle the challenges of HIV/AIDS, child health, and global health inequities in the future. This series of twenty case studies illustrates real-life proven, large-scale success stories in global public health. Drawing from a rich evidence base, the accessible case write-ups highlight experiences in scale-up of health technologies, strengthening of health systems, and the use of health education and policy change to achieve impressive reductions in disease and disability, even in the poorest countries. An overview chapter draws attention to factors that contributed to the successes. Discussion questions help to bring out the main points and provide a point of departure for independent student research.




Global Health in the 21st Century


Book Description

Perhaps no other public policy issue has greater potential to affect some of the most significant economic, political, social, and ethical changes of the 21st century than global health. In this book, a scholar/physician team authors a comprehensive introduction to global health issues and emphasises the potential of public health intervention to improve the longevity and quality of human life across the globe. The authors have lived and worked in Africa as well as in medically underserved areas of the United States, so they write with firsthand experience and authority. Using themes of interconnectedness, globalisation, and united concern from citizens, this book encourages readers to consider the role that they might play as engaged citizens in taking on the global public health challenges of the 21st century including everything from AIDs and flu to tobacco, obesity, and threats in conflict zones.




Transforming Global Health


Book Description

This contributed volume motivates and educates across fields about the major challenges in global health and the interdisciplinary strategies for solving them. Once the purview of public health, medicine, and nursing, global health is now an interdisciplinary endeavor that relies on expertise from anthropology to urban planning, economics to political science, geography to engineering. Scholars and practitioners in the health sciences are seeking knowledge from a wider array of fields while, simultaneously, students across majors have a growing interest in humanitarian issues and are pursuing knowledge and skills for impacting well-being across geographic and disciplinary borders. Using a highly practical approach and illustrative case studies, each chapter of this edited volume frames a particular problem and illustrates how interdisciplinary problem-solving can address the greatest challenges in global health today. In doing so, each chapter spurs critical and creative thinking about emergent and future problems. Topics explored among the chapters include: Transforming health and well-being for refugees and their communities Governing to deliver safe and affordable water The global crisis of antimicrobial resistance Low-tech, high-impact interventions to prevent neonatal mortality Communicating taboo health subjects Alternative housing delivery for slum upgrades Transforming Global Health: Interdisciplinary Challenges, Perspectives, and Strategies is a vital and timely compendium for any reader invested in improving global health equity. It will find an audience with researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and program implementers, as well as undergraduate and graduate students and faculty in the fields of global health, public health, and the health sciences.




Global Health Research in an Unequal World


Book Description

This title is available as an Open Access eBook for free from CABI's eBook platform. Visit their website at www.cabi.org/cabebooks/ebook/20163308509. This book is a collection of fictionalized case studies of everyday ethical dilemmas and challenges encountered in the process of conducting global health research in places where the effects of political and economic inequality are particularly evident. It is a training tool to fill the gap between research ethics guidelines and their implementation "on the ground." The cases focus on "relational" ethics: ethical actions and ideas that continuously emerge through relations with others, rather than being determined by bioethics regulation. They are based on stories and experiences collected by a group of social anthropologists who have worked with leading transnational medical research organizations across Africa in the past decade. Accompanied by guidelines, discussion questions and selected further readings, the book provides a flexible resource for training and self-study for people engaged in health research with, universities, international collaborative sites and NGOs - and for everyone interested in the realities of global health research today.




Introduction to Global Health


Book Description




Global Health Leadership


Book Description

This timely book serves as an overview of the challenges in global health leadership from multiple perspectives, bringing together an interdisciplinary group of academics, researchers, and leaders from around the world who are conducting innovative and high-quality research in the field of global health (GH). The book helps illustrate theoretical and conceptual ideas of leadership using recent examples of GH challenges from the Asia-Pacific region. Leadership is an important element of education and training in GH. Leadership can be demonstrated by many sectors, including local and national government, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, multilateral organizations, civil society, and private individuals and corporations. The cases included in this book provide an analysis of the major components to successful efforts in GH, including cooperation, cultural competency, vision, and community ownership. Given that GH practice is typically conducted in team settings with members from various backgrounds, this book provides students, faculty, and professionals in public health and related fields with an opportunity to examine multiple examples of leadership in different contexts. Readers learn how leaders have overcome challenges faced in the operationalization of complex health interventions, foreign policy, and working with key stakeholders and organizations. This book aims to help students to: Identify key trends and issues working in GH contexts; Analyze situations in GH and explain the ways public health, health care, and other organizations can work together or individually to affect the health of a community; Recognize the ways that diversity influences policies, programs, services, and the health of a community; Support diverse perspectives in developing, implementing, and evaluating policies, programs, and services that affect the health of a community; Identify characteristics of GH leaders; Learn about ways to identify and measure success in leadership; and Understand the challenges and barriers faced in GH programs and how to overcome those.




Global Health and International Relations


Book Description

The long separation of health and International Relations, as distinct academic fields and policy arenas, has now dramatically changed. Health, concerned with the body, mind and spirit, has traditionally focused on disease and infirmity, whilst International Relations has been dominated by concerns of war, peace and security. Since the 1990s, however, the two fields have increasingly overlapped. How can we explain this shift and what are the implications for the future development of both fields? Colin McInnes and Kelley Lee examine four key intersections between health and International Relations today - foreign policy and health diplomacy, health and the global political economy, global health governance and global health security. The explosion of interest in these subjects has, in large part, been due to "real world" concerns - disease outbreaks, antibiotic resistance, counterfeit drugs and other risks to human health amid the spread of globalisation. Yet the authors contend that it is also important to understand how global health has been socially constructed, shaped in theory and practice by particular interests and normative frameworks. This groundbreaking book encourages readers to step back from problem-solving to ask how global health is being problematized in the first place, why certain agendas and issue areas are prioritised, and what determines the potential solutions put forth to address them? The palpable struggle to better understand the health risks facing a globalized world, and to strengthen collective action to deal with them effectively, begins - they argue - with a more reflexive and critical approach to this rapidly emerging subject.




Volunteer Economies


Book Description

Examines the increasing significance of the volunteer and volunteerism in African societies, and their societal impact within precarious economies in a period of massive unemployment and faltering trajectories of social mobility.