As global health inequities continue to widen, policymakers are redoubling their efforts to address them. Yet the effectiveness and quality of these programs vary considerably, sometimes resulting in the reverse of expected outcomes. While local political issues or cultural conflicts may play a part in these situations, an important new book points to a universal factor: the prevailing deficit model of assessing health needs, which puts disadvantaged communities on the defensive while ignoring their potential strengths. The asset model proposed in Health Assets in a Global Context International Health and Development offers a necessary complement to the problem-focused framework by assessing multiple levels of health-promoting aspects in populations, and promoting joint solutions between communities and outside agencies. The book provides not only rationales and methodologies (e.g., measuring resilience and similar elusive qualities) but also concrete examples of asset-based initiatives in use across the world on the individual and community levels.

This book is a tribute to Professor Pedro Gil, who created the Department of Statistics, OR and TM at the University of Oviedo, and a former President of the Spanish Society of Statistics and OR (SEIO). In more than eighty original contributions, it illustrates the extent to which Mathematics can help manage uncertainty, a factor that is inherent to real life. Today it goes without saying that, in order to model experiments and systems and to analyze related outcomes and data, it is necessary to consider formal ideas and develop scientific approaches and techniques for dealing with uncertainty. Mathematics is crucial in this endeavor, as this book demonstrates. As Professor Pedro Gil highlighted twenty years ago, there are several well-known mathematical branches for this purpose, including Mathematics of chance (Probability and Statistics), Mathematics of communication (Information Theory), and Mathematics of imprecision (Fuzzy Sets Theory and others). These branches often intertwine, since different sources of uncertainty can coexist, and they are not exhaustive. While most of the papers presented here address the three aforementioned fields, some hail from other Mathematical disciplines such as Operations Research; others, in turn, put the spotlight on real-world studies and applications. The intended audience of this book is mainly statisticians, mathematicians and computer scientists, but practitioners in these areas will certainly also find the book a very interesting read.

This book will serve as a key resource for all clinicians working in orthopedics, sports medicine, and rehabilitation for the sport of tennis. It provides clinically useful information on evaluation and treatment of the tennis player, covering the entire body and both general medical and orthopedic musculoskeletal topics. Individual sections focus on tennis-related injuries to the shoulder, the elbow, wrist, and hand, the lower extremities, and the core/spine, explaining treatment and rehabilitation approaches in detail. Furthermore, sufficient sport science information is presented to provide the clinical reader with extensive knowledge of tennis biomechanics and the physiological aspects of training and rehabilitation. Medical issues in tennis players, such as nutrition and hydration, are also discussed, and a closing section focuses on other key topics, including movement dysfunction, periodization, core training, and strength and conditioning specifics. The expansive list of worldwide contributors and experts coupled with the comprehensive and far-reaching chapter provision make this the highest-level tennis medicine book ever published.

This book disentangles the issues in connection with the advancement of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and its interface with health policy. It highlights the factors that should shape its progress in the near future. Interdisciplinary and critical views from a number of professionals are put together in a prescient order to cast some light and make recommendations as to the next steps HTA should take to be fit for purpose. A wealth of documents dealing with HTA have been published over the last three decades. HTA allegedly is one of the bedrocks of regulation and medical decision making. However, counter vailing visions contend that geographical variations in the role that HTA is actually playing within countries pinpoints specific room for improvement. Given our social preferences, cherry-picking HTA’s features and successes over the last decades moves it away from its possibility frontier. Some of the most noteworthy hindrances that HTA faces, in several countries, to making headway towards its consolidation as an efficient tool for regulation and decision making are as follows: insufficient resources, delays in assessment, inadequate priority setting, regulatory capture, public distrust, actual influence on regulatory decisions, the need for strengthening international cooperation and harmony, the lack of sound and consistent assessments of diagnostic tests, medical devices and surgical innovations and limited dissemination. Time has come for HTA to take a renewed stand. There is a pressing need to submit HTA to in-depth critical scrutiny.

This book offers an ultimate clinical guide to all the medical issues related to triathlon – a very popular Olympic and international sport, and the most modern of all the endurance activities. Triathletes experience a range of environmental conditions and physiological demands, depending on the race, that must be taken into consideration when preparing for medical assistance. The book addresses in detail the topics of cardiovascular adaptations, overuse injuries, overtraining syndrome, endurance anaemia, nutrition and the physiological aspects associated with the discipline. It provides information on the training and technical aspects of the different distances in triathlon disciplines, with a special focus on safety in open-water swimming. Dedicated chapters also cover issues related to female, young, master and para-triathletes. Combining research perspectives with many years of experience practicing in the field, this book offers sport medicine physicians, orthopedists, physical therapists and coaches a comprehensive guide to the evaluation, treatment and prevention of all the overuse conditions and to improving athletes’ performance.