Pandemics have quickly become one of the most important subjects of the twenty-first century. This edited volume provides a comparative analysis of the ways in which pandemics are theorized and studied across several disciplines. A Multidisciplinary Approach to Pandemics has two objectives: first, to explore the growing diversity of theories and paradigms developed to study pandemics; and second, to initiate a multidisciplinary dialogue about the ontological, epistemological, para...

Health Care in Canada examines the challenges faced by the Canadian health care system, a subject of much public debate. In this book Katherine Fierlbeck provides an in-depth discussion of how health care decisions are shaped by politics and why there is so much disagreement over how to fix the system.Many Canadians point to health care as a source of national pride; others are highly critical of the system's shortcomings and call for major reform. Yet meaningful debate ca...

A Healthy Society, Updated and Expanded Edition, is one doctor’s vision for a new approach to politics – and a new approach to building a healthier world. Drawing on his experiences as a family physician, Dr. Meili argues that health delivery too often focuses on treatment of immediate causes and ignores more fundamental conditions that lead to poor health. The social determinants of health – income, education, employment, housing, the wider environment, and social supports – have...

As Canada was in the grips of the worst pandemic in a century, Canadian media struggled to tell the story. Newsrooms, already run on threadbare budgets, struggled to make broader connections that could allow their audience to better understand what was really happening, and why. Politicians and public health officials were mostly given the benefit of the doubt that what they said was true and that they acted in good faith.This book documents each month of the first year of the pand...

Health care is Canada’s best-loved social program — and for good reason. For over forty years, Canadians have enjoyed high quality health services based on need rather than on ability to pay. Yet we hear almost daily accounts of problems with the system. We are bombarded with warnings that public health care is unsustainable, especially in light of the baby boomer generation reaching retirement age. Such stories can help undermine our support for public care even though they are often base...

“A broad-ranging, insightful analysis of the complex practical and ethical issues involved in global health.”—Kirkus ReviewsFew topics in human rights have inspired as much debate as the right to health. Proponents would enshrine it as a fundamental right on a par with freedom of speech and freedom from torture. Detractors suggest that the movement constitutes an impractical over-reach. Jonathan Wolff cuts through the ideological stalemate to explore both views. In an acce...

How Successive Governments Have Weakened the Foundation of All Canadian's Social and Economic SecurityAt some point you will find yourself lying in a hospital bed. There is a good chance that your bed will be a firm, rubber pad held secure between two rails and parked along a corridor in a busy emergency department. Moans of “Nurse!” will echo from the beds ahead of you in line. Those pleas will fall largely on deaf ears. Your hospital is underfunded and understaffed. Welc...

THE CRITICAL WORK IN GLOBAL HEALTH, NOW COMPLETELY REVISED AND UPDATED "This book compels us to better understand the contexts in which health problems emerge and the forces that underlie and propel them." -Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu H1N1. Diabetes. Ebola. Zika. Each of these health problems is rooted in a confluence of social, political, economic, and biomedical factors that together inform our understanding of global health. The imperative for those who study...

The international community has made great progress in improving global health. But staggering health inequalities between rich and poor still remain, raising fundamental questions of social justice. In a book that systematically defines the burgeoning field of global health law, Lawrence Gostin drives home the need for effective global governance for health and offers a blueprint for reform, based on the principle that the opportunity to live a healthy life is a basic human right....

This Open Access book highlights the ethical issues and dilemmas that arise in the practice of public health. It is also a tool to support instruction, debate, and dialogue regarding public health ethics. Although the practice of public health has always included consideration of ethical issues, the field of public health ethics as a discipline is a relatively new and emerging area. There are few practical training resources for public health practitioners, especially resources which inclu...

Wasting Away is a provocative text that examines and assesses the Canadian health care system. This seven-chapter book explores the development of the Canadian health care system and breaks the analysis down into accessible units: who provides (the institutions and the people); who pays (funding sources); and who decides (public, private, and patients). The concluding chapter sums up the winners and losers in this system. A new Introduction by the authors thoroughly updates the subject.

In the light of scares about potential pandemics such as swine fever and avian flu, the issue of global health and its governance is of increasing concern to scholars and practitioners of medicine, public health, social work, and international politics alike.Providing a concise and informative introduction to how global health is governed, this book:Explores the various ways in which we understand global health governanceExplains the "nut...