Richard K. Thomas – författare

In recent years health professionals have developed a growing appreciation of the critical role that communication plays in healthcare. The effective communication of information on medical conditions and healthy lifestyles has played an important part in the improvement of the health status of the American population. At the same time, it is hard to ignore the negative impact that ineffective communication can have within the healthcare arena. We only have to note the contribution of poor communication to malpractice suits, misdiagnoses, failures in patient compliance, and cross-cultural misunderstandings to see the role that communication plays. This recognition of the impact—both positive and negative—of communication in healthcare is generating growing interest in the field of health communication.

-Basic theory and concepts underlying the health communication field

-Real-world strategies for designing, implementing, and evaluating programs

-Up-to-date coverage of print, broadcast, digital, and interactive health media

-Profiles of target populations with specific health needs

-Case examples illustrating what works and what doesn’t

-Sidebars, glossary, Web links, and other tools

The benefits of good health communication are many, from better relationships between providers and patients to improved treatment compliance to reduced inequities of care.

By combining comprehensive background with detailed applications, this uniquely practical reference serves professionals involved in health care marketing or administration, health communication specialists looking to adapt to emerging technologies or new audiences, and advocacy groups. It can also be a valuable classroom text for communications, public health, and related courses.

Despite the growing importance of marketing for health professionals, there is no concise how-to guide available on the topic for use by physician practices, hospitals and other healthcare organizations. Although the industry has become increasingly market driven, healthcare administrators and marketers are left with little guidance with regard to the concepts, techniques, and data appropriate for healthcare marketing.

The proposed book would serve as a convenient reference for health professionals who want to understand the marketing process, develop marketing initiatives or interface with marketing professionals. Marketing theory and the history of marketing in healthcare will be minimized in an attempt to provide a practical guide for everyday use. The focus will be on how to do marketing, with the reader introduced to supporting aspects such as market research, marketing planning, and evaluation. The author also discusses marketing techniques for social marketing.

Health Services Marketing: A Practitioner’s Guide will cover broad topics appropriate for any healthcare organization and provide enough specifics to tailor marketing activities to the needs of particular practitioners. This book will be useful for both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.

The third edition of Health Services Planning represents a necessary revision of the second edition (2003) and reflects the significant changes that have occurred in the social and health environments, the healthcare field, and the planning endeavor itself. The book reviews the history of health planning (with reference to activities in other countries) before describing the process from start to finish in great detail. The philosophy underlying health planning and its perception, past and present, are reviewed with a particular emphasis on the factors that are making health planning more relevant than ever.

The steps in the health services planning process are reviewed and supported by how-to guidance, examples of planning applications, and planning case studies. The various levels and types of planning are described (societal, community, organizational; strategic, business, marketing), and the similarities and differences discussed.

Newand updated chapters in this edition cover the planning requirements introduced through the Affordable Care Act, the rethinking of the community health needs assessment process, and the implications of the population health movement for health planning:

Health Services Planning, 3rd Ed., remains a critical resource for health administration programs, as well as an essential publication for health professionals in both public and private sector healthcare organizations that need to have an understanding of the planning process.

Music as a Chariot offers a multidisciplinary perspective whose primary proposition is that theatre is a type of music. Understanding how music enables the theatre experience helps to shape our entire approach to the performing arts.

Beginning with a discussion on the origin and nature of time, the author takes us on an evolutionary journey to discover how music, language and mimesis co-evolved, eventually coming together to produce the complex way we experience theatre.

The book integrates the evolutionary neuroscience of the human brain into this journey, offering practical implications and applications for the auditory expression of this concept—namely the fundamental techniques artists use to create sound scores for theatre.

With contributions from directors, playwrights, actors and designers, Music as a Chariot explores the use of music to carry ideas into the human soul—a concept that extends beyond the theatrical to include film, video gaming, dance, or anywhere art is manipulated in time.

Music as a Chariot offers a multidisciplinary perspective whose primary proposition is that theatre is a type of music. Understanding how music enables the theatre experience helps to shape our entire approach to the performing arts.

Beginning with a discussion on the origin and nature of time, the author takes us on an evolutionary journey to discover how music, language and mimesis co-evolved, eventually coming together to produce the complex way we experience theatre.

The book integrates the evolutionary neuroscience of the human brain into this journey, offering practical implications and applications for the auditory expression of this concept—namely the fundamental techniques artists use to create sound scores for theatre.

With contributions from directors, playwrights, actors and designers, Music as a Chariot explores the use of music to carry ideas into the human soul—a concept that extends beyond the theatrical to include film, video gaming, dance, or anywhere art is manipulated in time.

The increasing importance of sickness and disability data across health-related disciplines is the focus of this concise but comprehensive resource. It reviews the basics of morbidity at the population level by defining core concepts, analyzing why morbidity has overtaken mortality as central to demographic study, and surveying ways these data are generated, accessed, and measured. Subsequent chapters demonstrate how this knowledge can be used to better understand—and potentially solve—critical public health issues, benefitting not only populations served, but also areas such as health services planning, resource allocation, and health policy-setting. 

To make this material useful to the most readers, this reference:

In Sickness and In Health is uniquely relevant to demographers and demography students, public health professionals, and epidemiologists. Its presentation of concepts and applications makes the book a valuable classroom text and a useful guide for those addressing challenges facing U.S. healthcare. 

This book provides a basic understanding and concise overview of the nature of population health, the factors that make a new paradigm necessary, and the attributes associated with this unique approach to community health improvement. Written in a very accessible way, the book describes the definition of population health, the attributes of population health, and what population health is and is not. It emphasizes the extent to which the population health model revolutionizes the approach to community health improvement within a contemporary context, beginning with a redefining of such common concepts as “health”, “healthcare”, “health status”, and “health needs assessment”. As such, this book is a valuable read for practitioners and professionals who need to be familiar with the population health approach but are not likely to try to implement it.