John G. Bruhn – författare

Community is a key concept in sociology. In the last decade, especially with the explosion of electronic communication, the definition of community has changed. There is now a need to define the concept of community and tie it to the various levels of human interaction, from the global to the individual.

Currently there are many books that address many aspects of community, but there is a lack of text which "connects" the concept of community with the range of issues from the macro level to the micro level.

This book will discuss the rationale for community, the varieties of communities, the effect of social change on communities and many other factors of connectedness as the costs for losing it.

- The qualities of a "trusted" leader; - How they created trust or; - How trust was destroyed in organizations; - How leaders worked in distrustful environments; - How to create a more healthy organization.

This timely work will be of interest to organizations and occupational sociologists, human resource workers, social psychologists, and students of management courses.

The sister cities of the southwestern United States border are challenged by widespread environmental and health issues and limited access to help. And while different initiatives have been set up to improve health outcomes and lessen inequities in the border region, evaluation data are scarce.

Culture and Health Disparities provides a perspective on U.S.-Mexico border health with an evidence-based guide for conceptualizing, implementing, and evaluating health interventions. Taking into account the unique qualities of border life and their influence on general wellbeing, this important volume offers detailed criteria for creating public health programs that are medically, culturally, and ethically sound. The book identifies gaps in intervention research on major health concerns in the area, relating them to disparity-reduction efforts in the rest of the U.S. and arguing for more relevant means of data gathering and analysis. The author also asserts that progress can be made on both sides of the border despite concurrent social and political problems in the region. Included in the coverage:

A text for researchers and practitioners working to promote border health and reduce service inequalities, Culture and Health Disparities asks pertinent questions and provides workable, meaningful answers.

This brief provides approaches to help family caregivers understand the role of caregiving, its challenges and consequences. Using real life case examples, it illustrates the essentials of family caregiving. The caregiving role can be a source of caregiver stress and can become increasingly burdensome. People are now living longer and acquiring chronic diseases, which makes it necessary to involve caregivers to assist in disability care for longer periods of time, and live out their end-time at home, which means caregivers are more and more needed, especially at the end-of-life. This brief illustrates the role and scope of caregiving and its future growth. It is useful to physicians, social workers, sociologists, psychologists, nurses, public health, public policy and families and has a broad appeal for use in courses on Death and Dying.

Many of our current social problems have been attributed to the breakdown or loss of community as a place and to the fragmentation of connections due to an extreme value of individualism in the Western world, particularly in the United States. Not all scholars and researchers agree that individualism and technology are the primary culprits in the loss of community as it existed in the middle decade of the 20th century. Nonetheless, people exist in groups, and connections are vital to their existence and in the daily performance of activities. The second edition of the Sociology of Community Connections will identify and help students understand community connectedness in the present and future.

This volume conceptualizes caregiving as an emerging sociological issue involving complex and fluctuating roles. The authors contend that caregiving must be considered in the context of the life span with needs that vary according to age, developmental levels, mental health needs and physical health demands of both caregivers and care recipients. As the nature and functions of caregiving evolve it has become a critical and salient issue in the lives of individuals in all demographic, socioeconomic and ethnic categories. This volume frames caregiving as a sociological issue and addresses a number of central concerns, such as:

- Caregiving is a life span experience associated with aging and the roles of spouses and adult children. - Caregiving involves a complex of social system variables that influence the social support and services to caregivers and care recipients. - The nature of the relationship among family caregivers, professional caregivers and the care recipient are embedded in their interaction and dynamics influenced by the internal and external variables that inhibit or facilitate the care situation. - How can caregiving be integrated with a public health agenda?

- What disparities or inequalities exist in caregiving and what are the barriers that sustain them? - What community-based interventions need to be developed to improve caregiving?