Behavioral Medicine and Health Psychology – serie

"This is a highly readable and very interesting book that opens a new chapter in thinking about international health form a public health perspective. It makes a compelling case for not only understanding the health problem but the health context. This means looking at policies and politics that are upstream from where the problem is typically addressed. This book will give a new and clear direction to teaching and responding to public health issues in developing countries. It is chock full of examples that illustrate the important principles, values, and lessons that are nicely elaborated in the book. For anyone interested in making a difference in the public health of the developing world, this book will be a vital resource."

—Lawrence Wallack, Portland State University

"This excellent text is targeted to those with little international experience and those unfamiliar with social and behavioral approaches to enhancing public health. The book clearly explicates social and behavioral approaches to resolving health problems in global terms."

—Noreen M. Clark, PhD, University of Michigan School of Public Health

"John Elder pulls together the story of communication and public health. This book will be a unique guide for both health professionals, and communication students to the ideas and programs that have shaped the past thirty years. It goes beyond the story of advertising and campaigns and exposes the real contribution of social marketing and social advocacy to some of the biggest public health success stories of our time." —William Smith, Academy for Educational Development, Washington, D.C.

This volume emphasizes experience in behavior change programs for the prevention and control of the world's biggest killers: malnutrition, respiratory infections, diarrhea, vaccine-preventable diseases, wasteful fertility, HIV/AIDS, and tobacco use. These programs are linked to theories and models that most typically frame them: health communications and social marketing, learning theory, media advocacy, and community self-control. Descriptions of programs and related literature presented in the book were selected essentially for how well they represent the application of a theory to a specific health or disease target.

"This is a highly readable and very interesting book that opens a new chapter in thinking about international health form a public health perspective. It makes a compelling case for not only understanding the health problem but the health context. This means looking at policies and politics that are upstream from where the problem is typically addressed. This book will give a new and clear direction to teaching and responding to public health issues in developing countries. It is chock full of examples that illustrate the important principles, values, and lessons that are nicely elaborated in the book. For anyone interested in making a difference in the public health of the developing world, this book will be a vital resource."

—Lawrence Wallack, Portland State University

"This excellent text is targeted to those with little international experience and those unfamiliar with social and behavioral approaches to enhancing public health. The book clearly explicates social and behavioral approaches to resolving health problems in global terms."

—Noreen M. Clark, PhD, University of Michigan School of Public Health

"John Elder pulls together the story of communication and public health. This book will be a unique guide for both health professionals, and communication students to the ideas and programs that have shaped the past thirty years. It goes beyond the story of advertising and campaigns and exposes the real contribution of social marketing and social advocacy to some of the biggest public health success stories of our time." —William Smith, Academy for Educational Development, Washington, D.C.

This volume emphasizes experience in behavior change programs for the prevention and control of the world's biggest killers: malnutrition, respiratory infections, diarrhea, vaccine-preventable diseases, wasteful fertility, HIV/AIDS, and tobacco use. These programs are linked to theories and models that most typically frame them: health communications and social marketing, learning theory, media advocacy, and community self-control. Descriptions of programs and related literature presented in the book were selected essentially for how well they represent the application of a theory to a specific health or disease target.

When smokers inhale smoke into their lungs, they take the drug nicotine into their bodies and brains, where it affects how the smokers feel and act. When smokers display their cigarettes, they are saying something symbolic and personal about themselves. And when smokers smoke, they put themselves at risk, often knowingly, of early disability or death.

Smoking is one of the world's most pressing public health problems. Cigarettes, Nicotine, and Health reviews the severe problems caused by smoking and examines individual and public health approaches to reducing smoking and its attendant health problems. Cigarettes are the most popular, most addictive, and most deadly form of tobacco use, with cigarette design contributing directly to the dangers of smoking; most of the book focuses on this predominant form of nicotine use.

What type, amount, and intensity of physical activity is good for your health? How much exercise is too much? Can avoiding physical activity make you ill or lead to premature death? This crisply written and thought-provoking book examines such issues to give readers the first integrated and consolidated introduction to what is known about the impact of physical activity on health. By selectively highlighting some of the best and most important research in physical activity, the authors synthesize studies and theory from several disciplines. They use a behavioral-epidemiology framework to organize the book and explore such topics as: physical activity and the health of children, adolescents, and the elderly; physical activity and its impact on mental health; the role of physical activity in prevention of particular diseases; health risks of physical activity; and how much physical activity is enough and how to measure it; how to promote physical activity and community-based physical activity interventions. Throughout the book, the authors offer studies of diverse populations, including different ethnic backgrounds and nationalities, and different gender groups, and different socioeconomic levels. Although the health benefits of physical activity are fairly well-known, this book furthers our understanding of how to help people become active enough to enjoy these benefits.

Caffeine is the most popular psychoactive substance in the world and one of the widest-traded commodities in the forms of coffee, tea, and soft drinks. But, is consumption of caffeine safe in terms of physical and mental health? Aimed at addressing this question, author Jack E. James traces how caffeine consumption evolved as well as how caffeine is absorbed, distributed, and metabolized in our bodies. He then probes the effects of caffeine on psychomotor and cognitive performance, psychological well-being, blood pressure and cardiovascular health, carcinogenic potentials, pregnancy and perinatal health, athletic performance, and diagnostic and therapeutic applications. The book concludes with an examination of the issue of whether or not caffeine is a drug of abuse and whether or not there is a safe level of caffeine consumption. Examining an understudied topic, Understanding Caffeine is a groundbreaking volume that will interest both professionals and practitioners in the fields of psychology, social psychology, public health, behavioral medicine, and nursing