Health Systems Science

How has the United States, with more resources than any nation, developed a healthcare system that delivers much poorer results, at near double the cost of any other developed country - such that legendary seer Warren Buffett calls the Medical Industrial Complex "the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness"?

Joyful. Graceful. Blessed. Strong. Anxious. Depressed. Stigmatized. Stereotyped. What happens when motherhood isn’t what you expected—and when you reach out for support, you are met with judgment and prejudice? Sandra Igwe shares her journey as a young Black mother, coping with sleepless nights, anxiety, and loneliness after the birth of her first daughter. Burdened by cultural expectations of the “good mother” and the “strong Black woman” trope, her mental health struggles became an uphill battle.

In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and asylums as they try to solve this epidemic and treat its victims - who learned the worst fate was not dying of it, but surviving it.

E. Fuller Torrey's audiobook provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. On staff at the National Institute of Mental Health when the program was being developed and implemented, Torrey draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with people involved, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved in the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public.

From two of the world's top scientists and one of the world's top science writers (all parents), Dirt Is Good is a Q&A-based guide to everything you need to know about kids and germs. "Is it OK for my child to eat dirt?" Jack Gilbert and Rob Knight are bombarded with questions like this every week from parents all over the world. Google a question like this, and you'll be overwhelmed with answers. The Internet is rife with speculation and misinformation about the risks and benefits of what most parents think of as simply germs, but which scientists now call the microbiome.

In Unhealthy: Corruption and Malpractice in the American Health System, Dr. Richard Kradin, a professor at Harvard Medical School and expert in pulmonary infectious diseases, explores the history of the corporate and ideological transformation of America’s medical profession and how it has diminished the quality of health care. He describes how progressive medical education has produced a generation of physicians as concerned with political activism as they are with medical science.

Black Women and Public Health creates an urgently needed interdisciplinary dialogue about issues of race, gender, and health. An enduring history of racism, sexism, and dehumanization of Black women's bodies has largely rendered the health needs of the Black community inaudible and invisible. Grounded in the lived experiences and expertise of Black women, this collection bridges gaps between researchers, practitioners, educators, and advocates.

Weißt du, was dein Körper jeden Tag, jede Minute, ja, jede Sekunde leistet? Stimmt, manchmal kann er auch ganz schön lästig sein: etwa wenn der Schädel brummt, alle Muskeln schmerzen oder dir – ganz peinlich – ein lauter Pups entfährt. Im Großen und Ganzen ist er aber wirklich voll in Ordnung! Er möchte nur sorgsam behandelt werden, denn wenn es ihm gut geht, geht es auch dir gut.

Justin Yerbury made a promise to his mother while she was dying of motor neurone disease (MND) that he would do everything he could to find a cure. MND had already taken several members of Justin's family, and he learned that they carried a rare genetic form of the disease that gave them a fifty-fifty chance of inheritance. Desperate to help his loved ones, Justin went to university to study science, eventually becoming a professor of molecular biology at the University of Wollongong and one of the world's leading experts on MND.

The human body is like an exceedingly well-fortified castle, defended by billions of soldiers - some live for less than a day, others remember battles for decades, but all are essential in protecting us from disease. This hidden army is our immune system, and without it we could not survive the eternal war between us and our microscopic enemies. Immune explores the incredible arsenal that lives within us - how it knows what to attack and what to defend and how it kills everything from the common cold to the plague bacterium.

This audiobook is a practical, evidence-based guide to seven key leadership disciplines that will help anyone working in health care to pursue brighter futures. In this audiobook, Andrew Garman looks at the major changes facing health-care organizations and the leadership competencies required to successfully meet those challenges. He explains how people become more effective leaders over time and what science tells us works best in making this happen.

Imagine what it would be like to one day wake up and find that you were suddenly completely blind. This is what happened to Vanessa Potter. Her condition is unique. It has no name. Over the course of the next six months, Vanessa slowly recovered her vision. This mesmerising account tells the story of Patient H69 in her own words, based on these detailed diaries she kept during her time of blindness and through the scientific research that was to follow.

With increasing urgency, the plight of the American family grips the national conscience. The family courts are often our society's last safety net to prevent disaster. In this penetrating exposé of the inner workings of the U.S. family court system, two award-winning journalists provide an intimate look at the lives of the children whose fate it decides.

At the peak of her career, classical homeopath and health-care columnist Katina Makris was stricken with a mysterious "flu". Only after five years of torment - two completely bedridden - and devastating blows to her professional and family life was Katina's illness finally diagnosed as Lyme disease.

Technological innovation is deeply woven into the fabric of American culture, and is no less a basic feature of American health care. Medical technology saves lives and relieves suffering, and is enormously popular with the public, profitable for doctors, and a source of great wealth for industry. Yet its costs are rising at a dangerously unsustainable rate. The control of technology costs poses a terrible ethical and policy dilemma. How can we deny people what they may need to live and flourish?

Nobody's Child traces the legal definition of "insanity" back to its inception in Victorian Britain nearly 200 years ago, from when our understanding of the human mind was in its infancy, to today, when questions of race, class, and ability so often determine who is legally "insane" and who is criminally guilty. Vinocour explains how "competency" and "insanity" are creatures of a legal system, not of psychiatric reality, and how, in criminal law, the insanity defense has too often been a luxury of the rich and white.

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.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania who also served as a special adviser to the White House on health-care reform, has written a brilliant diagnostic explanation of why health care in America has become such a divisive social issue, how money and medicine have their own American story, and why reform has bedeviled presidents of the left and right for more than one hundred years.

In The Ten Year War, veteran journalist Jonathan Cohn offers the compelling story of the defining political battle of our time, one that will shape political conversations for decades. At the heart of the book is the decades-old argument over what’s wrong with American health care and how to fix it. But the battle over health care was always about more than policy. The Ten Year War offers a deeper examination of how our governing institutions, the media and the two parties have evolved, and the dysfunction those changes have left in their wake.

Andy Lazris, MD, is a practicing primary care physician who experiences the effects of Medicare policy on a daily basis. As a result, he believes that the way we care for our elderly has taken a wrong turn and that Medicare is complicit in creating the very problems it seeks to solve. Aging is not a disease to be cured; it is a life stage to be lived. Lazris argues that aggressive treatments cannot change that fact but only get in the way and decrease quality of life.