This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Before new interventions are released into disease control programmes, it is essential that they are carefully evaluated in `field trials'. These may be complex and expensive undertakings, requiring the follow-up of hundreds, or thousands, of individuals, often for long...

Unlocking the Future of Infectious Disease Research ResponseIn a world where emerging infectious diseases constantly threaten humanity, advances in science and technology promise defense against future pathogens before they cause pandemics. The field of emergency research response and preparedness remains in its infancy, however. Not until the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak was accelerated research broadly recognized as a crucial component of emergency response. ...

Longlisted for British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction 2018Dr. Danielle Martin sees the challenges in our health care system every day. As a family doctor and a hospital vice president, she observes how those deficiencies adversely affect patients. And as a health policy expert, she knows how to close those gaps. A passionate believer in the value of fairness that underpins the Canadian health care system, Dr. Martin is on a mission to improve me...

From a nationally recognized expert, an exposé of the worst excesses of our zeal for medical testingGoing against the conventional wisdom reinforced by the medical establishment and Big Pharma that more screening is the best preventative medicine, Dr. Gilbert Welch builds a compelling counterargument that what we need are fewer, not more, diagnoses. Documenting the excesses of American medical practice that labels far too many of us as sick, Welch examines the soci...

The definitive story of American health care today -- its causes, consequences, and confusions.In March 2010, the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. It was the most extensive reform of America's health care system since at least the creation of Medicare in 1965, and maybe ever. The ACA was controversial and highly political, and the law faced legal challenges reaching all the way to the Supreme Court; it even precipitated a government shutdown. It was a signa...

This book discusses the most important techniques available for longitudinal data analysis, from simple techniques such as the paired t-test and summary statistics, to more sophisticated ones such as generalized estimating of equations and mixed model analysis. A distinction is made between longitudinal analysis with continuous, dichotomous and categorical outcome variables. The emphasis of the discussion lies in the interpretation and comparison of the results of the different techniques....

Health care costs make up nearly a fifth of U.S. gross domestic product, but health care is a peculiar thing to buy and sell. Both a scarce resource and a basic need, it involves physical and emotional vulnerability and at the same time it operates as big business. Patients have little choice but to trust those who provide them care, but even those providers confront a great deal of medical uncertainty about the services they offer. Selling Our Souls looks at the contradictions in...

The Strategy of Preventive Medicine, by Geoffrey Rose, first published in 1993 remains a key text for anyone involved in preventive medicine. Rose's insights into the inextricable relationship between ill health, or deviance, in individuals and populations they come from, have transformed our whole approach to strategies for improving health. His personal and unique book, based on many years research, sets out the case that the essential determinants of the health of society are to be foun...

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...

The healthcare Genie is out of the bottle. Obamacare, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will impact every one of you. These changes will come slowly and inexorably, but regardless of who is in power, you need to be prepared. It will be more important than ever to take control of your health. You are the boss; the decisions are yours. You must question and question again. The best result comes from collaboration between a patient and physician who, working as a team, reach a fi...

Health Promotion is a relatively new discipline and there is little in the way of practical help for students and practitioners in choosing and implementing appropriate evaluation methods. As the demands for rigorous evaluation and evidence-based decision-making increase, health promotion cannot ignore the need for accurate, reliable and valid methods to carry out evaluation. This book provides clear descriptions (with plentiful practical examples) of such methods, and the problems that ca...

When poet and essayist Kenneth Sherman was diagnosed with cancer, he began keeping a notebook of observations that blossomed into this powerful memoir. With incisive and evocative language, Sherman presents a clear-eyed view of what the cancer patient feels and thinks. His narrative voice is personal but not confessional, practical but not cold, thoughtful and searching but not self-pitying or self-absorbed.The author’s wait time for surgery on a malignant tumour was exceptionally ...