Health & Social Care books

This book describes the events, activities and negotiations leading up to the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session on international drug policy. A range of respected authors from International institutions, academia and civil society organisations detail the background to the negotiations and the outcome; and possible future scenarios for continued reform and change at the High Level Review in 2019. The chapters include consideration of the positions taken by blocs and nation-states at all points on the prohibition – reform continuum. Topics covered include discussions on the importance of human rights, access to essential medicines and the role played by cannabis in revealing the contradictions and divisions in both national and international contexts. The break-down of the previous international consensus on ‘the world drug problem’ is clearly described and analysed, as is the slow progress being made to the adoption of a human rights and health-based approach to currently illegal drugs. Consideration is also given to the nations and arguments which continue to defend prohibition and its repressive impacts on national populations, and the prioritising of geo-politics over population health this represents in practice. There are lessons and examples here for international politics and national policy reform.

This special volume contributes to the rapidly growing body of eHealth research, presenting a selection of multidisciplinary studies on the role and impacts of technology and the Internet in health communication, healthcare delivery, and patient self-management. The use of the Internet and new communication technologies have impacted nearly every aspect of life in recent years. These technologies hold tremendous promise to improve systems of healthcare and enable people to better understand their health and manage their healthcare. However, there are also risks to the use of eHealth technologies. Empirical evidence is urgently needed to examine the use and impacts of eHealth technologies and to inform targeted health communication interventions. Chapters explore both old and new challenges associated with technology-enabled care. These include the persistence of social determinants in shaping Digital Divides in access and use of eHealth technologies, the unintended consequences associated with electronic medical records and pagers on healthcare professionals’ ability to control their work time, and how self-tracking and quantification may exacerbate gendered norms of the body and health. Other chapters provide updated information on trends in and predictors of people’s trust of health information channels, how people make credibility assessments of online health information, the role of personality traits in perceived benefits in online support group participation, and how online health resources impact people’s sense of empowerment and the use of healthcare services. Finally, chapters explore the future potential of eHealth in addressing the needs of underserved communities and guide the creation of new technology-enabled intervention strategies.

This book seeks to provide students and practicing nurses with the tools to better understand and engage in scientific arguments to support quality nursing and evidence-based practice. The nature of nursing and its relationship with science remains an area of ongoing debate, controversy and considerable confusion to both students and practitioners. For a science-based health discipline, it is something of a paradox that most nursing students have limited exposure to scientific philosophy education, which is not covered in depth in many modern university nursing programmes. This work seeks to remedy this: in providing material on modern scientific research methods, with particular emphasis on the context of practice, it presents an alternative theoretical iteration of holistic nursing as scientific inquiry. The author is a passionate advocate for empirical and pragmatic approaches to nursing, and the book provides challenging ideas to support a new wave of critical-thinking in contemporary nursing, confronting postmodern dogma with contemporary scientific critique. In doing so, this text engages readers with the art of progressive empirical client-centred care, appropriate for the development of 21st century holistic nursing practice.

This volume covers macro-level system issues and micro-level issues involving health and health care concerns for women, and racial and ethnic minorities. Topics covered include examination of health and health care issues of patients or of providers of care especially those related to concerns for women and for racial and ethnic minorities in different countries. This volume is divided into four sections. The first section introduces the volume. The second section covers women and reproductive related health and health care concerns, using data sources from the United States and the UK. The third section examines health care practitioners, health and health care, relating to issues of women or racial and ethnic minorities, using data sources from the US and Canada. The last section relates specifically to racial and ethnic minorities and health and health care. Chapters focus on Black men, on Asian Americans, on Mexican Americans, and across racial and/or ethnic differences.

Human capital is embodied in human beings. It embraces the individual’s capacity to perform and enjoy activities that provide money and/or psychic income. Health behaviour affects human capital and is itself affected by the individual’s human capital. This volume consists of original theoretical and empirical contributions to our knowledge of the interdependence between Human Capital and Health Behaviour.

Volume 16 of Research in Occupational Stress and Well Being is focused on how stress and well-being shape the experiences of military personnel both in and out of the combat zone. The book examines the connections between life in or after the military and employee stress, health, and well being. Chapters in this volume include veterans’ transitions into the workplace, work-family issues for military couples as well as children of parents in the military, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychopathy and emotion, the role of stress and well-being on performance in the military, resilience and stress interventions in military organizations and the use of drugs by soldiers and veterans as a coping mechanism for chronic pain. The book showcases the work of the best researchers and theorists contributing to this field to provide a multidisciplinary and international collection that gives a thorough and critical assessment of knowledge, and major gaps in knowledge, on occupational stress and well being with a view to shaping future research both in military and civilian research literatures.

The objective of this series is to promote theory and research in the increasingly growing area of occupational stress, health and well being, and in the process, to bring together and showcase the work of the best researchers and theorists who contribute to this area. As you know, questions of work stress span many disciplines and many specialized journals. Our goal is to provide a multidisciplinary and international collection that gives a thorough and critical assessment of knowledge, and major gaps in knowledge, on occupational stress and well being. Research in Occupational Stress and Well Being is focused on power, politics and influence. It has been widely accepted that power, politics and influence are pervasive within most social entities, including work organizations. However, research on the role of social influence in the stress process is still needed. This volume will focus on the connections between social influence processes, broadly defined (e.g., power, politics, political skill and influence), and employee stress, health, and well-being.