How can we care so much about health care yet so little about public health? Before Covid-19, public health programs constituted only 2.5 percent of all US health spending, with the other 97.5 percent going towards the larger health care system. In fact, the United States spends on average $11,000 per citizen per year on health care, but only $286 per person on public health. It seems that Americans value health care, the medical care of individuals, over public health, t...

From a leading public health expert and physician, and in the style of Studs Terkel's Working, comes an eye-opening look at what it’s like to have to work physically hard for your money in America . . .A Living is a vivid portrait of the working lives of the patients who visit Dr. Michael Stein, a primary care doctor in urban America. What makes his patients unique is that they, by and large, do demanding manual labor. Very few have the luxury of ...

In the early years of COVID-19, Americans witnessed the intersection of a global pandemic, an economic collapse, and civil unrest that galvanized the country and the world and ushered in an era of unprecedented disruption. Three years later, we can begin to reflect on the experience of the pandemic and ask ourselves how the lessons of that experience can inform a healthier present and future. The Turning Point: Reflections on a Pandemic examines the first years of COVID-19 through...

This issue of Medical Clinics, guest edited by Drs. Jeffrey H. Samet, Patrick G. O'Connor, and Michael D. Stein, is devoted to Substance Use and Addiction Medicine. Articles in this outstanding issue include: Making Unhealthy Substance Use a Part of Behavioral Health Integration in Primary Care; The Inpatient Addiction Consult Medical Service: Expertise for Hospitalized Patients with Complex Addiction Problems; The Addiction Physician Workforce: Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine ...

People have long been fascinated about times in human history when different cultures and societies first came into contact with each other, how they reacted to that contact, and why it sometimes occurred peacefully and at other times was violent or catastrophic.Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change, and Archaeology, edited by James G. Cusick,seeks to define the role of culture contact in human history, to identify issues in the study of culture contact i...

Business Networking: Fine art of Small Talk 31 Tips and Tricks on What to Talk About to Start Crucial Conversations that Lead to more Business Deals and RelationshipsIf you are interested in gaining an edge in business networking-this book is for you! It does not matter if you are well versed or a novice. This book has something for everyone and you will indeed find something beneficial to add to your repertoire. You will learn some tips and tricks to help develop and polish your s...

A POLITICAL PROVOCATION FROM A PAIR OF PHYSICIANS WRITING OUTSIDE THEIR LANE Americans care about their health. Americans pay lots of money in hopes of maintaining their health. So why are Americans so unhealthy? The reason is simple: as a country, the United States overinvests in medical care at the expense of the social, economic, and cultural forces that produce health. The rise of medicine as a cornerstone of American life and culture has coincided with a social and po...

"A gripping, illuminating book . . . Dr. Stein is drawn, in an almost Sherlock Holmesian way, toward trying to fathom and analyze addicts' behavior. . . . hauntingly and successfully, Stein lets readers make a doctor's experiences their own." — New York Times"Beautifully told… [with] great insight, empathy and compassion." — Abraham Verghese, author of The Tennis Partner, My Own Country, and Cutting for StoneThe Addict is the powerful an...

We will all be patients sooner or later. And when we go to the doctor, when we're hurting, we tend to think in terms of cause and condemnation. We often look for relief not only from physical symptoms but also from our self-blame. We want from our doctors kindness under any of its many names: empathy, caring, compassion, humanity. We look for safety and forgiveness. But we forget that doctors, too, are often in need of forgiveness—from their patients and from themselves. No doctor enters t...

Recent news of a California city to outlaw circumcision, and anti-Semitic and anti-Zionistic activities at many U.S. Universities has already caused many Jews to recoil in horror. Bothered by this, history teacher and author Michael Stein decides to write a compelling fiction, Decision 2030, about the Jews' decision to fight or leave. This book is a fictional account of a Jewish community, Grayvelt, that is suffering from physical and political attacks on a massive scale in the years prior...

This interdisciplinary collection of essays addresses the theoretical, practical and legal dimensions of equality for persons with disabilities. The issues covered include the central problem of defining disability and impairment; the dilemma of same versus different treatment; the balance between autonomy and external influence and support; linkages to other anti-discrimination categories such as race and sex; the place of disability theory within identity politics; and issues of life, de...

The variety and increasing availability of hypermedia information systems, which are used in stationary applications like operators’ consoles as well as mobile systems, e.g. driver information and navigation systems in automobiles form a foundation for the mediatization of the society. From the human engineering point of view this development and the ensuing increased importance of information systems for economic and private needs require careful deliberation of the derivation and applica...