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The Health of Populations,

Edition 1 Beyond Medicine

Editors: By Jack James

Publication Date: 28 Oct 2015

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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.

Key Features

Heavily evidence-based and thoroughly referenced with hundreds of scientific citations
Contains a glossary, as well as valuable tables, illustrations, and information boxes to further explain core content
Provides fresh perspectives on issues related to rapid population growth, population aging, rising costs, diminishing resources, health inequality, and more
Carefully distils extensive tracts of information, clarifies misunderstandings, and rebuts myths with the ultimate goal of encouraging better understanding of the action needed to promote optimal health for all

About the author

By Jack James, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Reykjavik University, Reykjavik, Iceland

Foreword
About the Author
Preface

Part 1: The Science of Health

Chapter 1: The Origins of Health
- 1.1 What is Health?
- 1.2 What Makes Humans Healthy?
- 1.3 Historical Causes of Increased Life Expectancy
Chapter 2: Current Patterns of Death and Disease
- 2.1 Current Main Causes of Death
- 2.2 Habits and Habitats Ancient and Modern
- 2.3 Discordance Between Paleolithic and Modern Habits and Habitats
- 2.4 What Is Healthcare For? The Preeminence of Behavioral Outcomes
Chapter 3: Twelve Millennia of Changing Human Habits and Habitats
- 3.1 Epidemiologic Transition
- 3.2 Demographic Transition
- 3.3 Transitions in Transition
- 3.4 What Longevity Revolution?
- 3.5 Are Populations Healthier Now As Well As Longer Lived?
- 3.6 Morbidity: Compression, Expansion, or Equilibrium?
Chapter 4: Biomedicine and Common Causes of Mortality and Morbidity
- 4.1 Road Traffic Injury and Biomedicine: The Relevance of Policy
- 4.2 Cardiovascular Disease: The Leading Global Cause of Mortality and Morbidity

Part 2: The Harm of Medicine

Chapter 5: Medical Harm: What Is It and What Is the Extent?
- 5.1 Medical Harm: What Is It?
- 5.2 Serial Harm: Wayward Doctors and Malfunctioning Systems
- 5.3 To Err Is Human: Harm Caused in the Routine Practice of Medicine
- 5.4 To Err Is Human, but to Repeat the Error Is…Inevitable!
- 5.5 Is Medicine Safe? Is It Getting Safer? The Evidence Says “No¿ to Both Questions
- 5.6 Can Biomedical Healthcare Be Made Safe?
Chapter 6: Sources of Harm: Prescription Drugs, Surgery, and Infections
- 6.1 Harm from Prescription Drugs
- 6.2 Harm from Surgery
- 6.3 Healthcare-Associated Infection
- 6.4 Multiple Drug Resistance
- 6.5 Limiting Harm Due to Antibiotic Resistance
Chapter 7: The Commercial Culture of Medicine
- 7.1 The Myth of Safe and Effective Prescription Drugs
- 7.2 Has Medicine Sold Out to Big Pharma?
- 7.3 What Doctors Do (and Don’t Do) to Limit Harmful Commercialism in Clinical Practice
Chapter 8: Big Pharma Entanglement with Biomedical Science
- 8.1 Science in the Service of Industry: The Loss of Scientific Integrity in Biomedical Research
- 8.2 Partners in Crime
- 8.3 Manufacturing Bias in Scientific Research
- 8.4 Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research
Chapter 9: The Charms and Harms of Personalized Medicine
- 9.1 Why Is Genomic Medicine Said to Be Personalized?
- 9.2 What Is the Efficacy of Personalized Medicine Now and What Is It Likely to Be?
- 9.3 To Screen or Not to Screen? Why Is That a Question?
- 9.4 The Genome Is but One Piece of the Heterogeneous Mosaic of Life
- 9.5 Genomic Personalized Medicine: Future Prospects and Legacy

Part 3: Achieving Optimal Health Sustainably

Chapter 10: Healing Practices and Evidence-Based Medicine
- 10.1 The Nature of Healing
- 10.2 Evidence-Based Medicine
- 10.3 Unwelcome Discoveries: Established Interventions That Don’t Work
Chapter 11: Placebo and the Therapeutic Process
- 11.1 The Placebo: Powerful, Powerless, or Passé?
- 11.2 The Therapeutic Process
- 11.3 Why Do Practitioners Use Interventions That Have No Specific Benefit?
Chapter 12: Prevention and Control of Disease
- 12.1 The Power of Prevention: Reorienting Healthcare
Chapter 13: Associated Prevention Concepts and Models
- 13.1 Ecological Models of Health and the Emergence of Health Activism
- 13.2 Health Inequality and the Social Determinants of Health
- 13.3 Health in All Policies
- 13.4 Welfare Provision and the “Nanny¿ State: Nudge, Fudge, Smudge, Grudge, or Budge
- 13.5 Why Do Successes in Prevention Not Attract the Accolades They Deserve?
- 13.6 Why Has Healthcare Not Adopted Prevention as the Predominant Approach?
- 13.7 What About the Ethical Imperative of Providing Help for Suffering Individuals?
- 13.8 The Ethical Foundations of Prevention Over Cure
Chapter 14: Optimal Healthcare: Risk Factor Reduction and Adjunctive Biomedical Intervention
- 14.1 Program for Prevention and Control of Common Complex Diseases Incorporating Risk Factor Reduction and Adjunctive Biomedical Care
- 14.2 Prevention of Disease Through Risk Factor Reduction to Reduce Disease Incidence
- 14.3 Biomedical Intervention to Control Disease Progression
Chapter 15: Mental Health
- 15.1 Mental Disorder: The Triple Yoke of Big Pharma, Psychiatry, and the Biomedical Model
- 15.2 Psychosocial Mental Health Promotion, Prevention, and Intervention

Epilogue
List of Acronyms
Glossary
Subject Index

Title 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

ISBN: 9780128028124

Page Count: 526

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Professionals and graduate students in public health, epidemiology, sociology, health science, health promotion, health education, preventative medicine, health policy and planning, health sociology and health psychology. In addition, this book will be greatly welcomed by the interested general reader

The Health of Populations,

Editors: By Jack James

Key Features

About the author

Title Reviews

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