Applied Global Health Humanities

This book highlights the importance of global Anglophone literature in global health humanities, shaping perceptions of health issues in the Global South and among minorities in the Global North. Using twelve novels, it explores the historical, political, sociocultural, ethical, and environmental aspects of health by analyzing the experiences of characters who suffer from infectious diseases, mental disorders, or disabilities, and who seek holistic healing practices.

Research Methods in Health Humanities surveys the diverse and unique research methods used by scholars in the growing, transdisciplinary field of health humanities. Appropriate for advanced undergraduates, but rich enough to engage more seasoned students and scholars, this volume is an essential teaching and reference tool for health humanities teachers and scholars. Health humanities is a field committed to social justice and to applying expertise to real world concerns, creating research that translates to participants and communities in meaningful and useful ways. The chapters in this field-defining volume reflect these values by examining the human aspects of health and health care that are critical, reflective, textual, contextual, qualitative, and quantitative. Divided into four sections, the volume demonstrates how to conduct research on texts, contexts, people, and programs. Readers will find research methods from traditional disciplines adapted to health humanities work, such as close reading of diverse texts, archival research, ethnography, interviews, and surveys. The book also features transdisciplinary methods unique to the health humanities, such as health and social justice studies, digital health humanities, and community dialogues. Each chapter provides learning objectives, step-by-step instructions, resources, and exercises, with illustrations of the method provided by the authors' own research. An invaluable tool in learning, curricular development, and research design, this volume provides a grounding in the traditions of the humanities, fine arts, and social sciences for students considering health care careers, but also provides useful tools of inquiry for everyone, as we are all future patients and future caregivers of a loved one.

The health humanities is a rapidly rising field, advancing an inclusive, democratizing, activist, applied, critical and culturally diverse approach to delivering health and wellbeing through the arts and humanities. It has generated new kinds of interdisciplinary research, knowledge and communities of practice globally. It has also acted to bring greater coherence and political force to contributions across a range of related disciplines and traditions. In this volume, a formidable set of authors explore the history, current state and future of the health humanities, in particular how its vision of the arts and humanities: Promotes creative public health. Opens new routes to health and wellbeing. Informs and drives better healthcare. Interrogates relationships between ill health and social equality. Develops humanist theory in relation to health and social care practice. Foregrounds cultural difference as a resource for positive change in society. Tests the humanity of an increasingly globalized health care system. Looks to overcome structural and process obstacles to cross-disciplinary ventures. Champions co-construction, co-design and mutuality in solving health and wellbeing challenges. Showcases less familiar, prominent or celebrated creative practices. Includes multiple perspectives on the value and health benefits of the arts and humanities not limited to or dominated by medicine. Divided into two main sections, the Companion looks at "Reflections and Critical Perspectives," offering current thinking and definitions within health humanities; and "Applications," comprising a wide selection of applied arts and humanities practices from comedy, writing and dancing to yoga, cooking and horticultural display.

This contributed volume motivates and educates across fields about the major challenges in global health and the interdisciplinary strategies for solving them. Once the purview of public health, medicine, and nursing, global health is now an interdisciplinary endeavor that relies on expertise from anthropology to urban planning, economics to political science, geography to engineering. Scholars and practitioners in the health sciences are seeking knowledge from a wider array of fields while, simultaneously, students across majors have a growing interest in humanitarian issues and are pursuing knowledge and skills for impacting well-being across geographic and disciplinary borders. Using a highly practical approach and illustrative case studies, each chapter of this edited volume frames a particular problem and illustrates how interdisciplinary problem-solving can address the greatest challenges in global health today. In doing so, each chapter spurs critical and creative thinking about emergent and future problems. Topics explored among the chapters include: Transforming health and well-being for refugees and their communities Governing to deliver safe and affordable water The global crisis of antimicrobial resistance Low-tech, high-impact interventions to prevent neonatal mortality Communicating taboo health subjects Alternative housing delivery for slum upgrades Transforming Global Health: Interdisciplinary Challenges, Perspectives, and Strategies is a vital and timely compendium for any reader invested in improving global health equity. It will find an audience with researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and program implementers, as well as undergraduate and graduate students and faculty in the fields of global health, public health, and the health sciences.

This handbook highlights the relevance of the social sciences in global public health and their significantly crucial role in the explanation of health and illness in different population groups, the improvement of health, and the prevention of illnesses around the world. Knowledge generated via social science theories and research methodologies allows healthcare providers, policy-makers, and politicians to understand and appreciate the lived experience of their people, and to provide sensitive health and social care to them at a time of most need. Social sciences, such as medical sociology, medical anthropology, social psychology, and public health are the disciplines that examine the sociocultural causes and consequences of health and illness. It is evident that biomedicine cannot be the only answer to improving the health of people. What makes social sciences important in global public health is the critical role social, cultural, economic, and political factors play in determining or influencing the health of individuals, communities, and the larger society and nation. This handbook is comprehensive in its nature and contents, which range from a more disciplinary-based approach and theoretical and methodological frameworks to different aspects of global public health. It covers: Discussions of the social science disciplines and their essence, concepts, and theories relating to global public health Theoretical frameworks in social sciences that can be used to explain health and illness in populations Methodological inquiries that social science researchers can use to examine global public health issues and understand social issues relating to health in different population groups and regions Examples of social science research in global public health areas and concerns as well as population groups The Handbook of Social Sciences and Global Public Health is a useful reference for students, researchers, lecturers, practitioners, and policymakers in global health, public health, and social science disciplines; and libraries in universities and health and social care institutions. It offers readers a good understanding of the issues that can impact the health and well-being of people in society, which may lead to culturally sensitive health and social care for people that ultimately will lead to a more equitable society worldwide.

Introduces key concepts and debates in health humanities and the health professions. Keywords for Health Humanities provides a rich, interdisciplinary vocabulary for the burgeoning field of health humanities and, more broadly, for the study of medicine and health. Sixty-five entries by leading international scholars examine current practices, ideas, histories, and debates around health and illness, revealing the social, cultural, and political factors that structure health conditions and shape health outcomes. Presenting possibilities for health justice and social change, this volume exposes readers—from curious beginners to cultural analysts, from medical students to health care practitioners of all fields—to lively debates about the complexities of health and illness and their ethical and political implications. A study of the vocabulary that comprises and shapes a broad understanding of health and the practices of healthcare, Keywords for Health Humanities guides readers toward ways to communicate accurately and effectively while engaging in creative analytical thinking about health and healthcare in an increasingly complex world—one in which seemingly straightforward beliefs and decisions about individual and communal health represent increasingly contested terrain.

This stimulating open access volume details the innovative work of the Pan Institution Network for Global Health in creating collaborative research-based answers to large-scale health issues. Equitable partnerships among member universities representing North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe reverse standard cross-national dynamics to develop locally relevant responses to health challenges as well as their underlying disparities. Case studies focusing on multiple morbidities and effects of urbanization on health illustrate open dialogue in addressing HIV, maternal/child health, diabetes, and other major concerns. These instructive examples model collaborations between global North and South as meaningful steps toward the emerging global future of public health. Included in the coverage: Building sustainable networks: introducing the Pan Institution Network for Global Health Fostering dialogues in global health education: a graduate and undergraduate approach Provider workload and multiple morbidities in the Caribbean and South Africa Project Redemption: conducting research with informal workers in New York City Partnership and collaboration in global health: valuing reciprocity Global Health Collaboration will interest faculty working within the field of global health; scholars within public health, health policy, and cognate disciplines; as well as administrators looking to develop international university partnerships around global health and graduate students in the areas of global health, health administration, and public health and related social sciences (e.g., sociology, anthropology, demography).

Human, animal and plant health is a field of work which offers opportunities for inter- and trans-disciplinary research. The whole topic bridges the natural and social sciences. Today, in a world of global environmental change it is widely recognized that human societies and their wellbeing depend on a sustainable equilibrium of ecosystem services and the possibility of cultural adaptation to global environmental change. The need to identify and quantify health risks related to global environmental change is now one of the most important challenges of humankind. Describing spatial (geographic, intra/inter-population) and temporal differences in health risks is an urgent task to understand societies' vulnerabilities and priorities for interventions better. The Göttingen International Health Network (GIHN) is a research and teaching network in relation to this cross-cutting topic. The book provides a collection of articles which contribute to this issue of overriding importance and presents an overview of the GIHN launch event. Human, animal and plant health is a field of work which offers opportunities for inter- and trans-disciplinary research. The whole topic bridges the natural and social sciences. Today, in a world of global environmental change it is widely recognized that human societies and their wellbeing depend on a sustainable equilibrium of ecosystem services and the possibility of cultural adaptation to global environmental change. The need to identify and quantify health risks related to global environmental change is now one of the most important challenges of humankind. Describing spatial (geographic, intra/inter-population) and temporal differences in health risks is an urgent task to understand societies' vulnerabilities and priorities for interventions better. The Göttingen International Health Network (GIHN) is a research and teaching network in relation to this cross-cutting topic. The book provides a collection of articles which contribute to this issue of overriding importance and presents an overview of the GIHN launch event.