Unlike her two older brothers, Mary chose to put off college so she could experience life outside the classroom. She worked at a Medicaid clinic in her central Illinois hometown and, at the suggestion of her boyfriend, joined the medical detachment of an infantry battalion, Illinois National Guard. She began to consider a medical career, until ... in July 2003, the President federalized her Guard unit and sent it to Iraq. There she did indeed experience life outside the classroom, includin...

A worldview built on humor, music, and human encounters.During his 37-year optometric career, Robert Schoen crossed paths with 40,000 patients. But it was his Jewish sense of humor, his years as a composer and performer, and a coast-to-coast walk that make these 18 stories so resonant.In this second collection of memoirs, Schoen brings a "diagnostic" eye to the page, illuminating the threads of humanity that are always present but mostly unseen. Moving from...

This book offers an overview of the latest developments in contemporary population issues by examining the current unprecedented changes in fertility, family behavior, mortality, and migration. It explores new theoretical perspectives that seek to incorporate narratives of the future, demographic uncertainty, and determinants of unplanned pregnancy. The context of fertility is changing, and the new, important subjects of policy interventions, multi-partner fertility and complex parenthood ...

This book provides an up-to-date survey on the nature, causes, and patterns of family change. The traditional nuclear family has been replaced by a multiplicity of other forms, as widespread cohabitation, high levels of divorce and union dissolution, rising childlessness, and far below replacement fertility have emerged to an extent never before seen. Theoretical perspectives on this “Second Demographic Transition” are presented, highlighting the dramatic changes in gender roles. New metho...

This edited volume offers state-of-the-art research on the dynamics of contemporary fertility by examining the implications of the economic and social forces that are driving the rapid change in fertility behavior, and the changing context, determinants, and measurement of contemporary human reproduction. The volume explores new theoretical avenues that seek to incorporate uncertainty, examine social contagion effects, and explain the rise in childlessness. Reproductive attitudes are re-ex...

In this book new mathematical and statistical techniques that permit more sophisticated analysis are refined and applied to questions of current concern in order to understand the forces that are driving the recent dramatic changes in family patterns. The areas examined include the impact of the evolving Second Demographic Transition, where complex patterns of gender dynamics and social change are re-orienting family life. New analyses of marriage, cohabitation, union dynamics, and union d...

This volume presents state of the art analyses from scholars dealing with a range of demographic topics of current concern, including longevity, mortality and morbidity, migration, and how population composition impacts intergenerational transfer schemes. New approaches are applied to such issues as measuring changes in cohort survivorship in low mortality populations, patterns of mortality improvement at older ages, and the consequences of heterogeneity in the susceptibility to death. Stu...

Across the last forty years, epidemiology has developed into a vibrant scientific discipline that brings together the social and biological sciences, incorporating everything from statistics to the philosophy of science in its aim to study and track the distribution and determinants of health events. A now-classic text, the second edition of this essential introduction to epidemiology presents the core concepts in a unified approach that aims to cut through the fog and elucidate the fundam...

What is epidemiology? What are the causes of a new disease? How can pandemics be prevented? Epidemiology is the study of the changing patterns of disease and its main aim is to improve the health of populations. It's a vital field, central to the health of society, to the identification of causes of disease, and to their management and prevention. Epidemiology has had an impact on many areas of medicine; from discovering the relationship between tobacco smoking and lung cancer, to the orig...

The new, completely revised, and updated edition of this classic text --sponsored by the International Epidemiological Association (IEA) and previously edited by John Last-- remains the definitive dictionary in epidemiology worldwide. In fact, with contributions from over 220 epidemiologists and other users of epidemiology from around the globe, it is more than a dictionary: it includes explanations and comments on both core epidemiologic terms and on other scientific terms relevant to all...

The problems of medical care confront us daily: a bureaucracy that makes a trip to the doctor worse than a trip to the dentist, doctors who can't practice medicine the way they choose, more than 40 million people without health insurance. "Medical care is in crisis," we are repeatedly told, and so it is. Barely one in five Americans thinks the medical system works well. Enter David M. Cutler, a Harvard economist who served on President Clinton's health care task force and later advised pre...

An introduction to the principles, methods and application of epidemiology for improving health and survival.