Alvin R. Tarlov - Böcker

This authoritative volume is a rich source of information and penetrating analyses regarding the diverse pathways by which society influences health. Widely recognized scholars from North America and Europe discuss the immediate social environments of family, workplace, and community and the more pervasive effects of race and gender relations, social class, culture and the political economy.

Disability in America presents a five-prong strategy for reducing the incidence and prevalence of disability as well as its personal, social, and economic consequences. Although the preferred goal is to avoid potentially disabling conditions, the authoring committee focuses on the need to prevent or reverse the progression that leads to disability and reduced quality of life in persons with potentially disabling conditions. Calling for a coherent national program to focus on prevention, the committee sets forth specific recommendations for federal agencies, state and local programs, and the private sector. This comprehensive agenda addresses the need for improved methods for collecting disability data, specific research questions, directions for university training, reform in insurance coverage, prenatal care, vocational training, and a host of other arenas for action.

In most European countries there is a growing imbalance between the supply and demand of medical manpower. Though many national gov­ ernments, international organizations and scientific institutes, and also, with a view from a different angle, doctors associations recognize this problem, it appears to be very difficult to bring all people concerned with this problem together in order to find a solution. On this occasion, the initiative to arrange an international meeting was taken by the junior-doctors associations of The Netherlands and Sweden with the organizational support of the Faculty of Medicine of University Limburg, Maastricht, The Netherlands, and under the auspices of the Permanent Working Group of European Junior Hospital Doctors. The symposium should be considered as a step in a series of continuing activities within the field of health manpower planning. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) organized a working symposium on Long-Range Forecasting and Planning in 1968 (8ellaglio, Italy), followed by the Expert Committee ofthe OECD which produced the 'New Directives in Education for Changing Health Care System' (OECD­ CERI report, Paris 1975). The Dutch ministries of Education and Sciences and of Health and Environmental Protection organized a seminar on 'Cooperation of Health Care and Education at Regional Level, Responsibilities and Cost Alloca­ tion' (1978, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands). Following this, the Dutch Association of Junior Hospital Doctors (LVAG) organized a national con­ ference 'Today a consultant in training, tomorrow an unemployed special­ ist?' (1980, Utrecht, The Netherlands).

The second volume in the groundbreaking and controversial reader on the connections between social structure and public health.