T. Kue Young - Böcker

This comprehensive review of the health of Native Americans in Canada and the United States presents historical trends in population and health status from pre-European contact to the present day. These are examined in terms of three groups of diseases: infectious diseases, chronic diseases, and injuries. The author discusses the etiology and pathogenesis of different diseases in each group, and considers the genetic and environmental risk factors involved. The incidence of disease among Native Americans and non-Native Americans are compared and variations among Native Americans belonging to different geographical, cultural and linguistic groups are examined. The Health of Native Americans integrates anthropology and epidemiology to demonstrate the interaction of biology and culture on disease causation, distribution and control offering a promising approach to understanding and improving the health status of Native Americans.

Population health encompasses traditional public health and preventive medicine but emphasizes the full range of health determinants affecting the entire population rather than only ill or high-risk individuals. The population health approach integrates the social and biological, the quantitative and qualitative, recognizing the importance of social and cultural factors in practice and research.This text is organized around the logical sequence of studying and attempting to improve the health of populations; measuring health status and disease burden, identifying and modelling health determinants, assessing health risks and inferring causation, designing research studies, planning interventions, and evaluating health programs. The second edition incorporates many new topics that reflect changes in contemporary public health concerns and our response to them; as well as shifts in research directions. These include lifecourse approaches to health, gene-environment interactions, emergent infections, and bioterrorism. Among the specific changes are new or expanded discussions of confidence intervals for commonly used rates, the impact of population ageing on mortality trends, health survey questionnaires, summary measures of population health, the new International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, migrant studies, race and ethnicity, psychoneuroendocrine pathways, social epidemiology, risk perception, communicating the SARS epidemic, ecologic studies, the odds radio, participatory research, suicide, evidence-based community interventions, evaluation methods and health economics, the Cochrane Collaboration, and systemic reviews.The many positive features of the first edition have been retained, such as the extensive use of boxes, case studies, and exercises; the selection of examples representing a variety of health problems, geographic regions, and historical periods; and a multidisciplinary orientation bridging the quantitative and qualitative, the social and biomedical sciences. The book aims to spark a new kind of broad-based training for researchers and practitioners of population health.

Numerous studies, inquiries, and statistics accumulated over the years have demonstrated the poor health status of Aboriginal peoples relative to the Canadian population in general. Aboriginal Health in Canada is about the complex web of physiological, psychological, spiritual, historical, sociological, cultural, economic, and environmental factors that contribute to health and disease patterns among the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. The authors explore the evidence for changes in patterns of health and disease prior to and since European contact, up to the present. They discuss medical systems and the place of medicine within various Aboriginal cultures and trace the relationship between politics and the organization of health services for Aboriginal people. They also examine popular explanations for Aboriginal health patterns today, and emphasize the need to understand both the historical-cultural context of health issues, as well as the circumstances that give rise to variation in health problems and healing strategies in Aboriginal communities across the country. An overview of Aboriginal peoples in Canada provides a very general background for the non-specialist. Finally, contemporary Aboriginal healing traditions, the issue of self-determination and health care, and current trends in Aboriginal health issues are examined.