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The United States spends billions of dollars annually on social and economic policies aimed at improving the lives of its citizens, but the health consequences associated with these policies are rarely considered. In Making Americans Healthier, a group of multidisciplinary experts shows how social and economic policies seemingly unrelated to medical well-being have dramatic consequences for the health of the American people. Most previous research concerning problems with health and healthcare in the United States has focused narrowly on issues of medical care and insurance coverage, but Making Americans Healthier demonstrates the important health consequences that policymakers overlook in traditional cost-benefit evaluations of social policy. The contributors examine six critical policy areas: civil rights, education, income support, employment, welfare, and neighborhood and housing. Among the important findings in this book, David Cutler and Adriana Lleras-Muney document the robust relationship between educational attainment and health, and estimate that the health benefits of education may exceed even the well-documented financial returns of education. Pamela Herd, James House, and Robert Schoeni discover notable health benefits associated with the Supplemental Security Income Program, which provides financial support for elderly and disabled Americans. George Kaplan, Nalini Ranjit, and Sarah Burgard document a large and unanticipated improvement in the health of African-American women following the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Making Americans Healthier presents ground-breaking evidence that the health impact of many social policies is substantial. The important findings in this book pave the way for promising new avenues for intervention and convincingly demonstrate that ultimately social and economic policy is health policy. A Volume in the National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy

When ethnomethodologist Albert Robillard began to suffer the  symptoms of motor-neuron disease, he realized he was a living laboratory for revealing the countless taken-for-granted methods people use to produce being together. Meaning of a Disability is a detailed autobiography of the experiences and trained observations of a university professor who became paralyzed in mid-life.

With his loss of speech, Robillard was forced to communicate through a lip-reading system developed by his wife and student assistants. Restricted by this form of communication and his paralysis, he soon learned the frustrations of making his  meaning known. Hospital nurses wrongly anticipated his words. Those who translated for him inevitably distorted his meaning. Most of all, the casual pace of conversational  give-and-take was disrupted. Old friends would leave before Robillard could provide the expected interactional response.

Finding himself isolated due to his lack of both mobility and vocalization, Robillard threw himself into his academic work and began to develop settings and methods where he could satisfactorily interact with others. A researcher and writer experienced in describing the bodily and verbal methods used to coordinate and construct the most ordinary of social forms, Robillard joins in this book both his years of sociological training and his time with illness to talk with moving and illuminating analysis about a  broad range of matters. Moving gracefully from examinations of narratives about disability and illness, the stigmatizing things that healthcare providers unwittingly say to their patients, and communication problems in the intensive care unit, to more personal reflections on anger, isolation, and stories of tragedy, Robillard also discusses disability in the workplace and such seemingly simple topics as computers and vacations. Meaning of a Disability is the personal story of a highly trained observer forced to confront simultaneously the limits of the disabled person's social world and the unspoken assumptions about meaningful interaction -- as he struggles with the daily difficulties of maintaining his identity.

Meaning of a Disability will interest a wide audience, including healthcare professionals, disabled people, and caretakers as well as academics studying ethnomethodology, health and illness, conversation, symbolic interaction, storytelling, and most aspects of lived experience.

Over the last two decades, the implosion of economies under the burden of debt, the negative repercussions of structural adjustment programs, the crisis of legitimacy, civil wars, and the collapse of some states have resulted in serious health issues across the African continent. Newly emerging diseases, such as Ebola virus and HIV/AIDS have killed and disabled millions. Some “old diseases,” such as yellow fever, tuberculosis, and polio have reappeared. Malaria, cholera, and meningitis continue to kill thousands. In many countries, the medical infrastructure has collapsed, while an increasing number of physicians and nurses have migrated to more hospitable places. Stigmatization of the affected people has exacerbated social and racial discrimination and has affected the implementation of national and international public health programs. The complexity of the situation requires an interdisciplinary approach. This collection, including contributions by historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and biologists, emphasizes the social and cultural contexts of African health, paying particular attention to the history of the colonial public health system and its legacy.

Medicine, Religion, and Health: Where Science and Spirituality Meet will be the first title published in the new Templeton Science and Religion Series, in which scientists from a wide range of fields distill their experience and knowledge into brief tours of their respective specialties. In this, the series' maiden volume, Dr. Harold G. Koenig, provides an overview of the relationship between health care and religion that manages to be comprehensive yet concise, factual yet inspirational, and technical yet easily accessible to nonspecialists and general readers.

Given recent developments in health care and policy and a steadily increasing population of people of Mexican origin in the United States, a comprehensive look at Mexican American health has never been more necessary. Adela de la Torre and Antonio Estrada first accomplished such an overview with Mexican Americans and Health in 2001, and they have since continued to revise and expand their initial work. With a multitude of additions and renovations, Mexican Americans and Health, 2nd Edition provides a timely and accessible description of current topics in Latino health.

De la Torre and Estrada once again present a broad and nuanced understanding of recent issues involving Mexican American health and well-being, this time with the addition of discussions on:

* the new U.S. Human Development Index to contextualize the health, education, and income status of Mexican Americans relative to other population groups,
* emerging diseases, such as diabetes and obesity,
* recent health-care reforms under the Obama administration,
* substance abuse, sexual risk, and psychological distress among HIV-positive individuals in the gay/bisexual community,
* and predictions of future trends for the next decade.
 
This new volume has been updated throughout to reflect the many developments in health care since its first edition. Mexican Americans and Health, 2nd Edition continues to present data on a large number of health issues that are important and relevant to the Mexican American population, while describing the social contexts in which they are occurring. Its comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach brings originality and focus to a dynamic literature.

During the first half of the twentieth century, representatives of the French colonial health services actively strove to expand the practice of Western medicine in the frontier colony of Cambodia. But as the French physicians ventured beyond their colonial enclaves, they found themselves negotiating with the plurality of Cambodian cultural practices relating to health and disease. These negotiations were marked by some success, a great deal of misunderstanding, and much failure.

Bringing together colorful historical vignettes, social and anthropological theory, and quantitative analyses, Mixed Medicines examines these interactions between the Khmer, Cham, and Vietnamese of Cambodia and the French, documenting the differences in their understandings of medicine and revealing the unexpected transformations that occurred during this period—for both the French and the indigenous population.