The book stems from the desire of the authors to disseminate tools and transformation of models in healthcare, inspired by Jeremy Rifkin’s theory 'Zero Marginal Cost'.The ambitious attempt to make an accessible and usable participative model of health, illness and treatment, meets the need of the human being to recover the relationship with himself and with the world around him. The environmental, economic, social and technological should be geared towards preserving the human bein...

The book stems from the desire of the authors to disseminate tools and transformation of models in healthcare, inspired by Jeremy Rifkin’s theory 'Zero Marginal Cost'. The ambitious attempt to make an accessible and usable participative model of health, illness and treatment, meets the need of the human being to recover the relationship with himself and with the world around him. The environmental, economic, social and technological should be geared towards preserving the human being and e...

The exploding cost of health care in the United States is a source of widespread alarm. Similarly, the upward spiral of college tuition fees is cause for serious concern. In this concise and illuminating book, well-known economist William J. Baumol explores the causes of these seemingly intractable problems and offers a surprisingly simple explanation. Baumol identifies the "cost disease" as a major source of rapidly rising costs in service sectors of the economy. Once we understand that d...

Obese individuals are twice as likely to experience heart failure as non-obese people. More than eighty-five per cent of type 2 diabetes sufferers are overweight. And in the United States, obese and overweight individuals make up more than two-thirds of the adult population. Public health organizations and governments have traditionally tried to combat obesity through shame-inducing policies, which assure people that they can easily lose weight by eating right and exercising. This generic ...

Every year the average number of prescriptions purchased by Americans increases, as do healthcare expenditures, which are projected to reach one-fifth of the U.S. gross domestic product by 2020. In Drugs for Life, Joseph Dumit considers how our burgeoning consumption of medicine and cost of healthcare not only came to be, but also came to be taken for granted. For several years, Dumit attended pharmaceutical industry conferences; spoke with marketers, researchers, doctors, and pat...

Every year, the average American spends about $7,300 on medical expenses. The typical Canadian pays $2,700, the Briton only $2,000. And yet, according to the World Health Organization, our healthcare system, in terms of total quality, ranks thirty-eighth in the world, right between Costa Rica and Slovenia. Not only do 40 million Americans lack health insurance, but more than 200,000 die each year because of medical mistakes. Our average life expectancy is lower than Cuba's. In Next Med...

This book discusses the core issues of modern public health, its themes, foundations and evolution and the impact of globalisation.

"First rate advice."--APHAWhat sort of training do you need to work in public health?What kinds of jobs are out there right now?And what exactly is an epidemiologist, anyway?Answering these questions and more, this career guide provides an overview of the numerous options in public health and the many different roads to get there. Whether you're a student who wants to launch a career or a professional looking to cha...

What happens when people turn their everyday experience into data: an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of self-tracking.People keep track. In the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin kept charts of time spent and virtues lived up to. Today, people use technology to self-track: hours slept, steps taken, calories consumed, medications administered. Ninety million wearable sensors were shipped in 2014 to help us gather data about our li...

Food Fortification: The evidence, ethics, and politics of adding nutrients to food critically analyses mandatory food fortification as a technology for protecting and promoting public health. Increasing numbers of foods fortified with novel amounts and combinations of nutrients are being introduced into the food supplies of countries around the world to raise populations' nutrient intakes. It is a technology that is becoming more widely used to tackle a variety of public health pr...

Each year, hospital-acquired infections, prescribing and treatment errors, lost documents and test reports, communication failures, and other problems have caused thousands of deaths in the United States, added millions of days to patients' hospital stays, and cost Americans tens of billions of dollars. Despite (and sometimes because of) new medical information technology and numerous well-intentioned initiatives to address these problems, threats to patient safety remain ...

Chronic diseases-heart disease, diabetes, lung disease, and common cancers-claim more than one out of every two lives worldwide. Within the next few decades their toll will rise, most greatly in developing countries. Yet this rapid growth of chronic diseases is not being met with a proportionate global response. Left unaddressed, they pose a major threat to social and economic development. This book is the first to synthesize the growing evidence-base surrounding chronic disease, comprehen...