This excerpt from the "masterful, timely, data-driven" study of the gun control debate examines the potential of stronger purchasing laws ( Choice).As the debate on gun control continues, evidence-based research is needed to answer a crucial question: How do we reduce gun violence? One of the biggest gun policy reforms under consideration is the regulation of firearm sales and stopping the diversion of guns to criminals. This selection from the major antho...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama in March 2010 is a landmark in U.S. social legislation, and the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the Act has ensured that it will remain the law of the land. The new law extends health insurance to nearly all Americans, fulfilling a century-long quest and bringing the United States to parity with other industrial nations. Affordable Care aims to control rapidly rising health care costs and promises to make th...

Why medicine adopts ineffective or harmful medical practices only to abandon them—sometimes too late.Medications such as Vioxx and procedures such as vertebroplasty for back pain are among the medical "advances" that turned out to be dangerous or useless. What Dr. Vinayak K. Prasad and Dr. Adam S. Cifu call medical reversal happens when doctors start using a medication, procedure, or diagnostic tool without a robust evidence base—and then stop using it when it is f...

An intimate portrait of the renowned international humanitarian organization.Winner of the PROSE Award for Excellence, Sociology and Social Work of the Association of American PublishersThis study of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) casts new light on the organization’s founding principles, distinctive culture, and inner struggles to realize more fully its “without borders” transnational vision.Pioneering medical sociologist ...

Outstanding Academic Title, Choice MagazineThe staggering toll of gun violence—which claims 31,000 U.S. lives each year—is an urgent public health issue that demands an effective evidence-based policy response.The Johns Hopkins University convened more than 20 of the world's leading experts on gun violence and policy to summarize relevant research and recommend policies that are both constitutional and have broad public support. Collected for the first time in one ...

Story lines from The Wire challenge public perceptions about the deadly, real-world connections between drugs, crime, and poverty.Did Omar Little die of lead poisoning? Would a decriminalization strategy like the one in Hamsterdam end the War on Drugs? What will it take to save neglected kids like Wallace and Dukie? Tapping into 'The Wire' uses the acclaimed television series as a road map for exploring connections between inner-city poverty and d...

"A major contribution not just to tobacco control research but also to research on global governance and public health . . . thorough [and] compelling." —Frank J. Chaloupka IV, Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois–ChicagoAs the era of globalization progressed, the tobacco industry capitalized on its elements—including trade liberalization, foreign direct investment, and global communications—to expand into countries where effective tobac...

How security procedures could be positive, safe, and effectiveThe inspections we put up with at airport gates and the endless warnings we get at train stations, on buses, and all the rest are the way we encounter the vast apparatus of U.S. security. Like the wars fought in its name, these measures are supposed to make us safer in a post-9/11 world. But do they? Against Security explains how these regimes of command-and-control not only annoy and intimidate...

This digital update to Reducing Gun Violence in America presents new evidence and developments in the effort to address the staggering toll of gun violence in the United States.In 2013—in the wake of the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School—Johns Hopkins University Press published Reducing Gun Violence in America, a collection of essays written by the world’s leading experts on gun violence. Updated Evidence and Policy Developments ...

The U.S. healthcare system is in critical condition--but this should come as a surprise to no one. Yet until now the solutions proposed have been unworkable, pie-in-the-sky plans that have had little chance of becoming law and even less of succeeding. In Code Red, David Dranove, one of the nation's leading experts on the economics of healthcare, proposes a set of feasible solutions that address access, efficiency, and quality.Dranove offers pragmatic remedies, some of them...

For many years, some groups have claimed that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution stands as an obstacle to most gun control laws. Lawrence E. Rosenthal and Adam Winkler debunk this myth with careful legal analysis of recent court decisions, including District of Columbia v. Heller. This selection from Reducing Gun Violence in America tackles the most fundamental question at hand: How do we reduce gun violence while upholding our constitutional right to bear arms...

The Politics of Precaution examines the politics of consumer and environmental risk regulation in the United States and Europe over the last five decades, explaining why America and Europe have often regulated a wide range of similar risks differently. It finds that between 1960 and 1990, American health, safety, and environmental regulations were more stringent, risk averse, comprehensive, and innovative than those adopted in Europe. But since around 1990, the book shows, global ...