The Health of Populations: Beyond Medicine

by Jack James

Overview

The Health of Populations: Beyond Medicine uses current research and in-depth analysis to provide insights into the issues and challenges of population health; a subject of increasing concern, due largely to rapid population growth, population aging, rising costs and diminishing resources, health inequality, and the global rise in noncommunicable diseases. Reducing the global burden of disease requires prevention of disease incidence, which is achievable through reduction of exposure to primary (behavioral) and secondary (biomedical) risk factors. The 15 chapters of the book are divided into three sections that focus on the science of health, the harm of medicine, and how to achieve optimal health. By highlighting the benefits of preventing incidence of disease, this book illustrates how biomedicine needs to be repositioned form being the dominant approach in healthcare to being an adjunct to behavioral, legislative, social, and other preventive means for optimizing population health.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780128028124
Publisher:	Elsevier Science
Publication date:	10/28/2015
Pages:	526
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jack James was educated in Sydney, where he completed university studies in psychology, biology, social science, and the humanities. He trained as a clinical psychologist, and completed a PhD in experimental clinical psychology. Shortly thereafter, he was drawn to the new field of health psychology, which became the mainstay of his subsequent professional and academic career. He has been on the faculty of several universities in Australia and Europe, and has been principal investigator and recipient of health-related research grants from major granting bodies in Australia, Ireland, Iceland, and the European Union. In the 1990s, he was Foundation Professor of Behavioural Health Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne, and Founding National Chair of the Australian College of Health Psychologists. In the 2000s, he was Professor and Head of Psychology, National University of Ireland, Galway. He now lives and works in Iceland, where he is Professor of Psychology, Reykjavík University.

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Science of Health1. The Origins of Health2. Current Patterns of Death and Disease3. Twelve Millennia of Changing Human Habits and Habitats4. Biomedicine and Common Causes of Mortality and Morbidity

Part 2: The Harm of Medicine5. Medical Harm: What Is It and What Is the Extent? 6. Prescription Drugs, Surgery, and Infections7. The Commercial Culture of Medicine8. Pharmaceutical Industry Entanglement with Biomedical Science9. The Charms and Harms of Personalized Medicine

Part 3: Achieving Optimal Health Sustainability10. Healing Practices and Evidence-based Medicine11. Placebo and the Therapeutic Process12. Prevention and Control of Disease13. Associated Prevention Concepts and Models14. Optimal Health: Risk Factor Reduction and Adjunctive Biomedical Intervention15. Mental Health

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This book provides a carefully constructed and thoroughly evidence-based critique of the limitations of conventional biomedical healthcare. It illustrates the conditions necessary to optimize the health of populations, achieve equality in global health, and limit healthcare costs despite continued population growth and aging

Editorial Reviews

"...a masterpiece...Everyone interested in health should buy and read this book...this book will be ranked in the top 10 best books written in the 21st century in the field of health sciences." —Psychology Today

"…focuses the power of scientific analysis to demonstrate with devastating force that prevention is vastly superior to cure, yet we frequently behave as if we did not believe that to be so, both as individuals and as societies, and that we do so at our peril…This book should be on the must-read list of politicians and policy planners as well as those of academics and senior tertiary students in public health, health promotion and medicine in general. The author’s highly accessible language and careful attention to definition of jargon terms makes the book very accessible to the non-specialist reader as well as students. The work could act as a wonderful core text for a series of seminars or tutorial debates in these fields…a text that should prove to be a powerful motivator…" —Thomas A. Matyas, PhD, Adjunct Professor, School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University, Honorary Professorial Fellow, Stroke Division, Florey Institute of Neurosciece and Mental Health

From the Publisher