The Future of Public Health


Book Description

"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.




The New Public Health


Book Description

The New Public Health has established itself as a solid textbook throughout the world. Translated into 7 languages, this work distinguishes itself from other public health textbooks, which are either highly locally oriented or, if international, lack the specificity of local issues relevant to students' understanding of applied public health in their own setting. This 3e provides a unified approach to public health appropriate for all masters' level students and practitioners—specifically for courses in MPH programs, community health and preventive medicine programs, community health education programs, and community health nursing programs, as well as programs for other medical professionals such as pharmacy, physiotherapy, and other public health courses. - Changes in infectious and chronic disease epidemiology including vaccines, health promotion, human resources for health and health technology - Lessons from H1N1, pandemic threats, disease eradication, nutritional health - Trends of health systems and reforms and consequences of current economic crisis for health - Public health law, ethics, scientific d health technology advances and assessment - Global Health environment, Millennium Development Goals and international NGOs




The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century


Book Description

The anthrax incidents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the spotlight on the nation's public health agencies, placing it under an unprecedented scrutiny that added new dimensions to the complex issues considered in this report. The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century reaffirms the vision of Healthy People 2010, and outlines a systems approach to assuring the nation's health in practice, research, and policy. This approach focuses on joining the unique resources and perspectives of diverse sectors and entities and challenges these groups to work in a concerted, strategic way to promote and protect the public's health. Focusing on diverse partnerships as the framework for public health, the book discusses: The need for a shift from an individual to a population-based approach in practice, research, policy, and community engagement. The status of the governmental public health infrastructure and what needs to be improved, including its interface with the health care delivery system. The roles nongovernment actors, such as academia, business, local communities and the media can play in creating a healthy nation. Providing an accessible analysis, this book will be important to public health policy-makers and practitioners, business and community leaders, health advocates, educators and journalists.




Primary Care and Public Health


Book Description

Ensuring that members of society are healthy and reaching their full potential requires the prevention of disease and injury; the promotion of health and well-being; the assurance of conditions in which people can be healthy; and the provision of timely, effective, and coordinated health care. Achieving substantial and lasting improvements in population health will require a concerted effort from all these entities, aligned with a common goal. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) requested that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) examine the integration of primary care and public health. Primary Care and Public Health identifies the best examples of effective public health and primary care integration and the factors that promote and sustain these efforts, examines ways by which HRSA and CDC can use provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to promote the integration of primary care and public health, and discusses how HRSA-supported primary care systems and state and local public health departments can effectively integrate and coordinate to improve efforts directed at disease prevention. This report is essential for all health care centers and providers, state and local policy makers, educators, government agencies, and the public for learning how to integrate and improve population health.




Communities in Action


Book Description

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.




Improving Health in the Community


Book Description

How do communities protect and improve the health of their populations? Health care is part of the answer but so are environmental protections, social and educational services, adequate nutrition, and a host of other activities. With concern over funding constraints, making sure such activities are efficient and effective is becoming a high priority. Improving Health in the Community explains how population-based performance monitoring programs can help communities point their efforts in the right direction. Within a broad definition of community health, the committee addresses factors surrounding the implementation of performance monitoring and explores the "why" and "how to" of establishing mechanisms to monitor the performance of those who can influence community health. The book offers a policy framework, applies a multidimensional model of the determinants of health, and provides sets of prototype performance indicators for specific health issues. Improving Health in the Community presents an attainable vision of a process that can achieve community-wide health benefits.




Oxford Textbook of Global Public Health


Book Description

Sixth edition of the hugely successful, internationally recognised textbook on global public health and epidemiology, with 3 volumes comprehensively covering the scope, methods, and practice of the discipline




Organization and Financing of Public Health Services in Europe


Book Description

What are public health services? Countries across Europe understand what they are or what they should include differently. This study describes the experiences of nine countries detailing the ways they have opted to organize and finance public health services and train and employ their public health workforce. It covers England France Germany Italy the Netherlands Slovenia Sweden Poland and the Republic of Moldova and aims to give insights into current practice that will support decision-makers in their efforts to strengthen public health capacities and services. Each country chapter captures the historical background of public health services and the context in which they operate; sets out the main organizational structures; assesses the sources of public health financing and how it is allocated; explains the training and employment of the public health workforce; and analyses existing frameworks for quality and performance assessment. The study reveals a wide range of experience and variation across Europe and clearly illustrates two fundamentally different approaches to public health services: integration with curative health services (as in Slovenia or Sweden) or organization and provision through a separate parallel structure (Republic of Moldova). The case studies explore the context that explain this divergence and its implications. This study is the result of close collaboration between the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and the WHO Regional Office for Europe Division of Health Systems and Public Health. It accompanies two other Observatory publications Organization and financing of public health services in Europe and The role of public health organizations in addressing public health problems in Europe: the case of obesity alcohol and antimicrobial resistance (both forthcoming).




Evidence-Based Medicine and the Changing Nature of Health Care


Book Description

Drawing on the work of the Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine, the 2007 IOM Annual Meeting assessed some of the rapidly occurring changes in health care related to new diagnostic and treatment tools, emerging genetic insights, the developments in information technology, and healthcare costs, and discussed the need for a stronger focus on evidence to ensure that the promise of scientific discovery and technological innovation is efficiently captured to provide the right care for the right patient at the right time. As new discoveries continue to expand the universe of medical interventions, treatments, and methods of care, the need for a more systematic approach to evidence development and application becomes increasingly critical. Without better information about the effectiveness of different treatment options, the resulting uncertainty can lead to the delivery of services that may be unnecessary, unproven, or even harmful. Improving the evidence-base for medicine holds great potential to increase the quality and efficiency of medical care. The Annual Meeting, held on October 8, 2007, brought together many of the nation's leading authorities on various aspects of the issues - both challenges and opportunities - to present their perspectives and engage in discussion with the IOM membership.




Healthy lives, healthy people


Book Description

The Government recognises that many lifestyle-driven health problems are at alarming levels: obesity; high rates of sexually transmitted infections; a relatively large population of drug users; rising levels of harm from alcohol; 80,000 deaths a year from smoking; poor mental health; health inequalities between rich and poor. This white paper outlines the Government's proposals to protect the population from serious health threats; help people live longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives; and improve the health of the poorest. It aims to empower individuals to make healthy choices and give communities and local government the freedom, responsibility and funding to innovate and develop ways of improving public health in their area. The paper responds to Sir Michael Marmot's strategic review of health inequalities in England post 2010 - "Fair society, healthy lives" (available at http://www.marmotreview.org/AssetLibrary/pdfs/Reports/FairSocietyHealthyLives.pdf) and adopts its life course framework for tackling the wider social determinants of health. A new dedicated public health service - Public Health England - will be created to ensure excellence, expertise and responsiveness, particularly on health protection where a national response is vital. The paper gives a timetable showing how the proposals will be implemented and an annex sets out a vision of the role of the Director of Public Health. The Department is also publishing a fuller story on the health of England in "Our health and wellbeing today" (http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@en/@ps/documents/digitalasset/dh_122238.pdf), detailing the challenges and opportunities, and in 2011 will issue documents on major public health issues.