Social Support And Cardiovascular Disease

In this groundbreaking work, distinguished contributors explore the myriad relationships between networks of social support and the development, treatment, and rehabilitation of individuals with cardiovascular disease. Chapters span the range from conceptual to methodological issues, and take into account gender, environmental, and cultural differences. The book will provide a wealth of information for clinicians and students in the fields of behavioral medicine, psychophysiology, and cardiovascular disease.

This book will change the way we understand the future of our planet. It is both alarming and hopeful. James Gustave Speth, renowned as a visionary environmentalist leader, warns that in spite of all the international negotiations and agreements of the past two decades, efforts to protect Earth's environment are not succeeding. Still, he says, the challenges are not insurmountable. He offers comprehensive, viable new strategies for dealing with environmental threats around the world. The author explains why current approaches to critical global environmental problems - climate change, biodiversity loss, deterioration of marine environments, deforestation, water shortages, and others - don't work. He offers intriguing insights into why we have been able to address domestic environmental threats with some success while largely failing at the international level. Setting forth eight specific steps to a sustainable future, Speth convincingly argues that dramatically different government and citizen action are now urgent. If ever a book could be described as essential, this is it.

Social isolation and loneliness are serious yet underappreciated public health risks that affect a significant portion of the older adult population. Approximately one-quarter of community-dwelling Americans aged 65 and older are considered to be socially isolated, and a significant proportion of adults in the United States report feeling lonely. People who are 50 years of age or older are more likely to experience many of the risk factors that can cause or exacerbate social isolation or loneliness, such as living alone, the loss of family or friends, chronic illness, and sensory impairments. Over a life course, social isolation and loneliness may be episodic or chronic, depending upon an individual's circumstances and perceptions. A substantial body of evidence demonstrates that social isolation presents a major risk for premature mortality, comparable to other risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, or obesity. As older adults are particularly high-volume and high-frequency users of the health care system, there is an opportunity for health care professionals to identify, prevent, and mitigate the adverse health impacts of social isolation and loneliness in older adults. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults summarizes the evidence base and explores how social isolation and loneliness affect health and quality of life in adults aged 50 and older, particularly among low income, underserved, and vulnerable populations. This report makes recommendations specifically for clinical settings of health care to identify those who suffer the resultant negative health impacts of social isolation and loneliness and target interventions to improve their social conditions. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults considers clinical tools and methodologies, better education and training for the health care workforce, and dissemination and implementation that will be important for translating research into practice, especially as the evidence base for effective interventions continues to flourish.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD), once thought to be confined primarily to industrialized nations, has emerged as a major health threat in developing countries. Cardiovascular disease now accounts for nearly 30 percent of deaths in low and middle income countries each year, and is accompanied by significant economic repercussions. Yet most governments, global health institutions, and development agencies have largely overlooked CVD as they have invested in health in developing countries. Recognizing the gap between the compelling evidence of the global CVD burden and the investment needed to prevent and control CVD, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) turned to the IOM for advice on how to catalyze change. In this report, the IOM recommends that the NHLBI, development agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and governments work toward two essential goals: creating environments that promote heart healthy lifestyle choices and help reduce the risk of chronic diseases, and building public health infrastructure and health systems with the capacity to implement programs that will effectively detect and reduce risk and manage CVD. To meet these goals, the IOM recommends several steps, including improving cooperation and collaboration; implementing effective and feasible strategies; and informing efforts through research and health surveillance. Without better efforts to promote cardiovascular health, global health as a whole will be undermined.

Not long ago, it was assumed that coronary heart disease mainly--or only--affected men. Now that CHD is recognized as a leading killer of women as well as men, numerous research studies have been made of its diverse presentations in women, causal factors, and possibilities for prevention and treatment. The expert contributions to Psychosocial Stress and Cardiovascular Disease in Women span the results of this cross-disciplinary awareness. This progressive resource takes a three-dimensional approach to its subject, focusing on epidemiology and risk factors for heart disease in women, the psycho- and neurobiology of stress and coronary disease, and promising clinical interventions. Chapters identify and analyze multiple intersections of social, biological, and psychological factors in affecting women's heart health, from the social dimensions of depression to genetic/environmental interactions to the demands of balancing work and family. These wide-ranging findings will assist and motivate professionals in choosing and creating interventions, developing appropriate prevention strategies, and reducing gender-based disparities in health care. Among the topics covered: Enhancing women's heart health: a global perspective. Coronary heart disease in women: evolution of our knowledge. Gender observations on basic physiological stress mechanisms in men and women. Sleep as a means of recovery and restitution in women. LifeSkills training: benefiting both genders, for different reasons. Gender considerations in psychosocial-behavioral interventions for coronary heart disease. In particular this book will be helpful for cardiologists and other clinicians who may ask themselves why patients do not seem to make rational choices. "Why do patients not follow the advice they are offered?" is a common complaint. The role of psychosocial stress for patient compliance and adherence can be traced throughout the volume. It is emphasized in the chapters on psychosocial interventions along with other tangible and conceptual suggestions and experiences with psychosocial stress and life style change. Psychosocial Stress and Cardiovascular Disease in Women offers a deep practical level of understanding of this epidemic to help expand the work of health and clinical psychologists, sociologists, cardiologists, primary care physicians, and epidemiologists.

This book fulfills the need for practical guidance among all professionals involved in the management of these patients, from residents and fellows of cardiology and internal medicine, surgical teams, physiotherapy professionals, critical care physicians and family medicine practitioners. The thoroughly updated content takes into account recent developments in cardiac rehabilitation, and incorporates practical advice on how to use guidelines in clinical practice. There will be one new chapter on patients with cardiac resynchronization therapy and all the others will be updated to keep up-to-date with the guidelines and current practice. Cardiac rehabilitation is of key importance to ameliorate long-term morbidity and mortality resulting from cardiac diseases and events. However, much of the current literature is dense, unwelcoming and academic in style and format. For those physicians understanding the scope of cardiac rehabilitation there is a need to distill the guidelines and various management options available to them into a concise practical manual. Up until now, all references have looked at the general options, but there is definite need to investigate the practicalities of individual patient groups.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Annotation This book addresses one major question: Why do men get more heart disease than women? Recent global trends in heart disease show that traditional coronary risk factors, such as elevated blood pressure and cholesterol are poor candidates in explaining the gender gap in heart disease. Changes in these risk factors also cannot explain the recent cardiovascular disease epidemic among middle-aged men in Eastern Europe. This book will focus on environmental, behavioral, and psychosocial variables, as well as new risk factors of a biological nature in an attempt to understand the gender gap in heart disease. It combines perspectives from numerous disciplines, such as demography, epidemiology, medicine, sociology, and psychology. This book features the work of a distinguished group of international researchers appearing in Richard Stone's report on "Stress: the invisible hand in Eastern Europe's death rates" (Science, vol. 288, June 9, 2000, pp. 1732-33). It combines perspectives from numerous disciplines, such as demography, epidemiology, medicine, nutrition, sociology, and psychology to explore the environmental, behavioral, and psychosocial influences on men's greater susceptibility to heart disease