Building Health Throughout The Life Course

Building Health Throughout the Life Courseelucidates how health develops and changes throughout the life course, and how the use of the life course approach among public health practitioners can ensure that health as a human right is achieved for all individuals. It describes the life course vision of health that focuses not only on diseases and their consequences, but rather on achieving long, healthy, active, and productive lives. The book consists of three stand-alone parts. Part 1, "Concepts", aims to illuminate the complexity of health through the understanding of the life course approach. It can be used to familiarize oneself with the evolution and meaning of the life course, which serves as a basis for effective public health practice. Part 2, "Implications", identifies the implications for the operationalization of the life course approach in public health. It translates the technical language of the life course literature to understand how the application of the life course approach requires changes in health systems, policies, research, and practice. Part 3, "Application in Public Health", identifies key opportunities to strengthen the adoption of the life course approach in public health practice. It describes concrete, evidence-based actions to improve health and well-being through the promotion and generation of skills throughout the life course. This book aims to help decision-makers and public health professionals to understand the life course meaning and concepts, which is essential to comprehend how health develops and changes throughout the life course. The book also describes how the life course model allows us to address health disparities by generating mechanisms to improve health and well-being by promoting the vision of health as the product of a series of experiences that contribute to or detract from health in the near and long term.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. ​This handbook synthesizes and analyzes the growing knowledge base on life course health development (LCHD) from the prenatal period through emerging adulthood, with implications for clinical practice and public health. It presents LCHD as an innovative field with a sound theoretical framework for understanding wellness and disease from a lifespan perspective, replacing previous medical, biopsychosocial, and early genomic models of health. Interdisciplinary chapters discuss major health concerns (diabetes, obesity), important less-studied conditions (hearing, kidney health), and large-scale issues (nutrition, adversity) from a lifespan viewpoint. In addition, chapters address methodological approaches and challenges by analyzing existing measures, studies, and surveys. The book concludes with the editors’ research agenda that proposes priorities for future LCHD research and its application to health care practice and health policy. Topics featured in the Handbook include: The prenatal period and its effect on child obesity and metabolic outcomes. Pregnancy complications and their effect on women’s cardiovascular health. A multi-level approach for obesity prevention in children. Application of the LCHD framework to autism spectrum disorder. Socioeconomic disadvantage and its influence on health development across the lifespan. The importance of nutrition to optimal health development across the lifespan. The Handbook of Life Course Health Development is a must-have resource for researchers, clinicians/professionals, and graduate students in developmental psychology/science; maternal and child health; social work; health economics; educational policy and politics; and medical law as well as many interrelated subdisciplines in psychology, medicine, public health, mental health, education, social welfare, economics, sociology, and law.

Sixth edition of the hugely successful, internationally recognised textbook on global public health and epidemiology, with 3 volumes comprehensively covering the scope, methods, and practice of the discipline

Global health is a rapidly emerging discipline with a transformative potential for public policy and international development. Emphasizing transnational health issues, global health aims to improve health and achieve health equity for all people worldwide. Its multidisciplinary scope includes contributions from many disciplines within and beyond the health sciences, including clinical medicine, public health, social and behavioral sciences, environmental sciences, economics, public policy, law and ethics. This large reference offers up-to-date information and expertise across all aspects of global health and helps readers to achieve a truly multidisciplinary understanding of the topics, trends as well as the clinical, socioeconomic and environmental drivers impacting global health. As a fully comprehensive, state-of-the-art and continuously updated, living reference, the Handbook of Global Health is an important, dynamic resource to provide context for global health clinical care, organizational decision-making, and overall public policy on many levels. Health workers, physicians, economists, environmental and social scientists, trainees and medical students as well as professionals and practitioners will find this handbook of great value.

Healthy ageing has long been a neglected area of epidemiological research as the traditional focus has been on specific chronic diseases of older life. There is a growing consensus from scientists, research funders and policy makers that ageing itself needs to be studied from an interdisciplinary and life course perspective, to inform strategies for reducing the societal and individual costs of an ageing population. A Life Course Approach to Healthy Ageing is a synthesis of life course perspectives in epidemiology and interdisciplinary perspectives in ageing research. It brings together expert investigators of maturing birth cohort and ageing studies, cross-cutting methodologists, and authorities in ageing research and knowledge transfer from across the world in one wide-ranging volume. Contributors discuss how aspects of healthy ageing are conceptualised, defined and measured; relate to each other; change across life; and are influenced by biological, psychological and social factors operating from early life onwards. They identify research gaps, and suggest how evidence from observational studies can be strengthened through improved study design and longitudinal analysis, thereby increasing the research contribution to practice or policy change. The book considers how we might delay or slow down the progressive, generalised impairment of function that occurs at the individual, body system and cellular levels, as people grow older. It also considers the determinants of wellbeing in older people, including personal fulfilment, positive emotions and social relationships. Broad in scope, discussing topics from genetics to psychological and social wellbeing, A Life Course Approach to Healthy Ageing is a key resource for epidemiologists, social scientists, clinicians, public health physicians, policy makers and practitioners with a research interest in healthy ageing.

The WHO World report on ageing and health is not for the book shelf it is a living breathing testament to all older people who have fought for their voice to be heard at all levels of government across disciplines and sectors. - Mr Bjarne Hastrup President International Federation on Ageing and CEO DaneAge This report outlines a framework for action to foster Healthy Ageing built around the new concept of functional ability. This will require a transformation of health systems away from disease based curative models and towards the provision of older-person-centred and integrated care. It will require the development sometimes from nothing of comprehensive systems of long term care. It will require a coordinated response from many other sectors and multiple levels of government. And it will need to draw on better ways of measuring and monitoring the health and functioning of older populations. These actions are likely to be a sound investment in society's future. A future that gives older people the freedom to live lives that previous generations might never have imagined. The World report on ageing and health responds to these challenges by recommending equally profound changes in the way health policies for ageing populations are formulated and services are provided. As the foundation for its recommendations the report looks at what the latest evidence has to say about the ageing process noting that many common perceptions and assumptions about older people are based on outdated stereotypes. The report's recommendations are anchored in the evidence comprehensive and forward-looking yet eminently practical. Throughout examples of experiences from different countries are used to illustrate how specific problems can be addressed through innovation solutions. Topics explored range from strategies to deliver comprehensive and person-centred services to older populations to policies that enable older people to live in comfort and safety to ways to correct the problems and injustices inherent in current systems for long-term care.

Governments across the WHO European Region need to take urgent action to address the growing public health inequality economic and environmental challenges in order to achieve sustainable development (meeting current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs) and to ensure health and well-being for present and future generations. Based on a scoping review this report concludes that current investment policies and practices (doing business as usual) are unsustainable with high costs to individuals families communities societies the economy and the planet. Investment in public health policies that are based on values and evidence provides effective and efficient inclusive and innovative solutions that can drive social economic and environmental sustainability. Investing for health and well-being is a driver and an enabler of sustainable development and vice versa and it empowers people to achieve the highest attainable standard of health for all.

While health literacy is a relatively new multidisciplinary field, it is vital to the successful engagement with and communication of health with patients, caregivers, and the public. This book ‘New Directions in Health Literacy Research, Theory, and Practice’ provides an introduction to health literacy research and practice and highlights similar scholarship in related disciplines. The book is organized as follows: the first chapter explains the still-evolving definition of health literacy; the next three chapters discuss developments and new directions in health literacy research, then a further two chapters are devoted to developments and new directions in health literacy theory. Two chapters explore health literacy interventions for vulnerable populations; four chapters cover health literacy leadership efforts; six chapters describe developments and new directions in disciplines that are similar to health literacy; and six chapters portray diverse health literacy practices. A preface from Richard Carmona M.D., the former U.S. Surgeon General, is included in the book. Although the book is intended primarily for health literacy researchers, practitioners and students, the diverse topics and approaches covered will be of interest to all healthcare and public health researchers, practitioners, and students, as well as scholars in related fields, such as health communication, science communication, consumer health informatics, library science, health disparities, and mass communication. As Dr. Carmona concludes in his preface: ‘This is essential reading for all health practitioners.’