This readable overview offers a public health framework for integrating medical and alternative care to improve health outcomes in patients with chronic illnesses. It details the promise, potential, and challenges of holistic services as patients seek diverse treatment options and health care systems address the demand for more affordable, accessible, and effective care. The book's integrative model describes the process in theory and practice, from cost and reimbursement issues and turf wars between providers to expanding on traditional concepts of illness and wellness. Learning...

This thought-provoking treatise argues that current human fertility rates are fueling a public health crisis that is at once local and global. Its analysis and data summarize the ecological costs of having children, presenting ethical dilemmas for prospective parents in an era of competition for scarce resources, huge disparities of wealth and poverty, and unsustainable practices putting irreparable stress on the planet. Questions of individual responsibility and integrity as well as personal moral and procreative issues are examined carefully against larger and more long-range concerns....

This ambitious volume sets out to understand how every company impacts public health and introduces a robust model, rooted in organizational and scientific knowledge, for companies committed to making positive contributions to health and wellness. Focusing on four interconnected areas of corporate impact, it not only discusses the business imperative of promoting a healthier society and improved living conditions worldwide, but also provides guidelines for measuring a company s population health footprint. Examples, statistics and visuals showcase emerging corporate involvement in public...

This interdisciplinary guide offers background, research findings, and practical strategies for assessing and improving air quality in hospitals and other healthcare settings. Positing good air quality as critical to patient and staff well-being, it identifies disease-carrying microbes, pollutants, and other airborne toxins and their health risks, and provides localized interventions for reducing transmission of pathogens. Effective large-scale approaches to air quality control are also outlined, from green building materials to hygienic HVAC and air treatment practices. Its thoroughness...

This compact resource presents current data on health literacy as it affects child health outcomes, with a sharp focus on improving communication between healthcare providers and pediatric patients and their families. A frequently overlooked social determinant of health in children, health literacy is shown as a critical skill for patients and families and a key aspect of patient engagement. The authors' evidence-based survey pinpoints common problems in healthcare providers' verbal and written communication with pediatric patients, their parents, and/or caregivers. Readers will learn...

This progressive resource places concepts of social determinants of health in the larger contexts of contemporary health ethics and the evolution of social reform. It provides needed analysis of the larger causes behind the immediate causes of illness and epidemics, particularly injustice, systemic inequities, and the cumulative effect of compound disadvantages. This moral approach to collective and individual responsibilities--on the part of practitioners as well as the public--supports a sound blueprint for finding answers to longstanding global and local concerns. Readers are challenged...

This book highlights the reality of malnutrition among school-age children in India and relates it with dietary adequacy, diversity and choice. Using empirical data from field research conducted in Karnataka, India, it documents the nutritional status of school-going children, and examines the socio-economic determinants. It provides insights into changing dietary patterns by analysing case studies from households and schools; and documents the impact of changing dietary choices on the daily nutritional intake of young children. As the issue of nutrition for school-age children is one that...

This concise volume analyzes the potential for the workplace environment--where so many people spend so much of their day--to improve workers' capacity for health and wellness. It pinpoints the link between sedentary lifestyles and poor health, and explores the role of office spatial design in encouraging physical activity to promote physical activity, health and prevent disease. The featured research study tracks workers' movement in a variety of office layouts, addressing possible ways movement-friendly design can co-exist with wireless communication, paperless offices, and new corporate...