Clinical trials used to be conducted overwhelmingly in the US and Europe but for a range of economic, technical and ethical reasons, the number of multicentre studies recruiting subjects in different regions of the World has grown exponentially. New medicines are tested in vast research networks involving several countries, hospitals and other medical institutions, and hundreds of individual subjects. In Pharmaceutical Research, Democracy and Conspiracy, Edison Bicudo examines the connecti...

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...

A people-centered approach to global healthWhen 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...

Few things make people react more strongly to the changes going on in health care than the word standardization. Critics shudder at the mindless sameness of standards, while supporters dream of a world in which standardized "best practices" open up a world of efficient health care delivery. The Gold Standard takes up this debate to investigate the real meaning of standardization and how it affects patients, doctors, and the institution of medicine. Showing that standards are not a...

A comprehensive, research-based introduction to healthcare management, covering healthcare systems, services, organisations and management.

With Inclusion, Steven Epstein argues that strategies to achieve diversity in medical research mask deeper problems, ones that might require a different approach and different solutions.Formal concern with this issue, Epstein shows, is a fairly recent phenomenon. Until the mid-1980s, scientists often studied groups of white, middle-aged men—and assumed that conclusions drawn from studying them would apply to the rest of the population. But struggles involving advocacy group...

Universal healthcare, perhaps the most distinguishing feature of Canada's public policy, is under fire, criticized for its heavy expense and questionable sustainability. In Where to From Here?: Keeping Medicare Sustainable, Stephen Duckett defends Canadian Medicare, addressing key concerns and refuting criticism, while also acknowledging flaws in the system and room for improvement.Duckett argues that while the fundamentals of Medicare are sound, a great deal of change is ...

The phenomenal growth of global pharmaceutical sales and the quest for innovation are driving an unprecedented search for human test subjects, particularly in middle- and low-income countries. Our hope for medical progress increasingly depends on the willingness of the world's poor to participate in clinical drug trials. While these experiments often provide those in need with vital and previously unattainable medical resources, the outsourcing and offshoring of trials also create new prob...

This volume's contributors evaluate the accomplishments, limits, and consequences of using quantitative metrics in global health. Whether analyzing maternal mortality rates, the relationships between political goals and metrics data, or the links between health outcomes and a program's fiscal support, the contributors question the ability of metrics to solve global health problems. They capture a moment when global health scholars and practitioners must evaluate the potential effectiveness...

Recent scandals and controversies, such as data fabrication in federally funded science, data manipulation and distortion in private industry, and human embryonic stem cell research, illustrate the importance of ethics in science. Responsible Conduct of Research, now in a completely updated second edition, provides an introduction to the social, ethical, and legal issues facing scientists today.

Societies make decisions and take actions that profoundly impact the distribution of health. Why and how should collective choices be made, and policies implemented, to address health inequalities under conditions of resource scarcity? How should societies conceptualize and measure health disparities, and determine whether they've been adequately addressed? Who is responsible for various aspects of this important social problem? In Health and Social Justice, Jennifer Prah Ruger el...

Scholars and governments recognize the importance of policy development and implementation for population health, but there is a lack of systematic theoretical and conceptual development in the health field to address the issue. Health Promotion and the Policy Process is the first book to take an in-depth look at the theoretical advances in the political sciences, including discussing the significance of political economy and sociology, which so far have made little progress in he...