The mid-twentieth-century evolution of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Between 1935 and 1985, the nascent public health profession developed scientific evidence and practical know-how to prevent death on an unprecedented scale. Thanks to public health workers, life expectancy rose rapidly as generations grew up free from the scourges of smallpox, typhoid, and syphilis. In Health and Humanity, Karen Kruse Thomas offers a thorough account of the growth of academic public health in the United States through the prism of the oldest and largest independent school of public health in the world. Thomas follows the transformation of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health (JHSPH), now known as the Bloomberg School of Public Health, from a small, private institute devoted to doctoral training and tropical disease research into a leading global educator and innovator in fields from biostatistics to mental health to pathobiology. A provocative, wide-ranging account of how midcentury public health leveraged federal grants and anti-Communist fears to build the powerful institutional networks behind the health programs of the CDC, WHO, and USAID, the book traces how Johns Hopkins helped public health take center stage during the scientific research boom triggered by World War II. It also examines the influence of politics on JHSPH, the school’s transition to federal grant funding, the globalization of public health in response to hot and cold war influences, and the expansion of the school’s teaching program to encompass social science as well as lab science. Revealing how faculty members urged foreign policy makers to include saving lives in their strategy of “winning hearts and minds,” Thomas argues that the growth of chronic disease and the loss of Rockefeller funds moved the JHSPH toward international research funded by the federal government, creating a situation in which it was sometimes easier for the school to improve the health of populations in India and Turkey than on its own doorstep in East Baltimore. Health and Humanity is a comprehensive account of the ways that JHSPH has influenced the practice, pedagogy, and especially our very understanding of public health on both global and local scales.

From a top healthcare futurist, frontline innovator, and Deloitte consultant comes a bold new vision for Humanizing Healthcare—hardwiring humanity at every point of care—that is good for people and good for business. Our nation’s healthcare and life science industry has changed dramatically over the past few decades—and not always for the better. In addition to rising costs and access challenges, the current system has caused needless suffering for patients and clinicians alike: physically, emotionally, financially, and socially. There have been numerous efforts to overhaul the system, but nothing has yet cured healthcare of its illnesses. In Humanizing Healthcare, paramedic-turned-physician executive and Deloitte Managing Director Summer Knight draws on her years of experience on the frontlines of healthcare to offer a powerful road map for real reform. Her refreshingly human approach to transforming our healthcare system provides practical strategies to: Identify core problems in the current system—and find the best workable solutions. Combine healthcare with social services—and build stronger networks of support. Use digital technology and virtual visits to provide expert care at lower costs. Empower healthcare consumers to make smarter choices in their treatment and purchasing options. Form therapeutic alliances between the clinical team (physicians and staff) and the home team (family and friends). Build a solid foundation for ongoing improvements that are truly sustainable, affordable, and humane. This is a clear, compassionate guide to how the industry can transform to embody a more human perspective and use it as a collective north star that will positively impact all stakeholders—consumers, providers, caregivers, staff, executives, shareholders, and the government—alike. Most importantly, this book will open your eyes to what’s possible when you create high-quality, deeply felt alliances that deliver consumer-driven care with value to all. Humanizing Healthcare is the future of health.

Experts estimate that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospitals. That's more than die from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDSâ€"three causes that receive far more public attention. Indeed, more people die annually from medication errors than from workplace injuries. Add the financial cost to the human tragedy, and medical error easily rises to the top ranks of urgent, widespread public problems. To Err Is Human breaks the silence that has surrounded medical errors and their consequenceâ€"but not by pointing fingers at caring health care professionals who make honest mistakes. After all, to err is human. Instead, this book sets forth a national agendaâ€"with state and local implicationsâ€"for reducing medical errors and improving patient safety through the design of a safer health system. This volume reveals the often startling statistics of medical error and the disparity between the incidence of error and public perception of it, given many patients' expectations that the medical profession always performs perfectly. A careful examination is made of how the surrounding forces of legislation, regulation, and market activity influence the quality of care provided by health care organizations and then looks at their handling of medical mistakes. Using a detailed case study, the book reviews the current understanding of why these mistakes happen. A key theme is that legitimate liability concerns discourage reporting of errorsâ€"which begs the question, "How can we learn from our mistakes?" Balancing regulatory versus market-based initiatives and public versus private efforts, the Institute of Medicine presents wide-ranging recommendations for improving patient safety, in the areas of leadership, improved data collection and analysis, and development of effective systems at the level of direct patient care. To Err Is Human asserts that the problem is not bad people in health careâ€"it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer. Comprehensive and straightforward, this book offers a clear prescription for raising the level of patient safety in American health care. It also explains how patients themselves can influence the quality of care that they receive once they check into the hospital. This book will be vitally important to federal, state, and local health policy makers and regulators, health professional licensing officials, hospital administrators, medical educators and students, health caregivers, health journalists, patient advocatesâ€"as well as patients themselves. First in a series of publications from the Quality of Health Care in America, a project initiated by the Institute of Medicine

This book explores how the medical has defined us: that is, the ways in which perspectives of medicine and health have affected understandings of what it means to be human. With chapters that span from the early modern period to the contemporary world, and are drawn from a range of disciplines and around the world, it holds that historical and cultural influences have brought about an understanding of humanity in which the medical is ingrained, sometimes unconsciously, usually as a mode of legitimisation. This volume is a valuable contribution for those interested in the medical humanities, history of medicine, history of ideas and the social approaches to health and illness.

A Science Friday pick for book of the year, 2019 One of America's top doctors reveals how AI will empower physicians and revolutionize patient care Medicine has become inhuman, to disastrous effect. The doctor-patient relationship--the heart of medicine--is broken: doctors are too distracted and overwhelmed to truly connect with their patients, and medical errors and misdiagnoses abound. In Deep Medicine, leading physician Eric Topol reveals how artificial intelligence can help. AI has the potential to transform everything doctors do, from notetaking and medical scans to diagnosis and treatment, greatly cutting down the cost of medicine and reducing human mortality. By freeing physicians from the tasks that interfere with human connection, AI will create space for the real healing that takes place between a doctor who can listen and a patient who needs to be heard. Innovative, provocative, and hopeful, Deep Medicine shows us how the awesome power of AI can make medicine better, for all the humans involved.

This textbook uses concepts and methods of the humanities to enhance understanding of medicine and health care.

Provides critical evidenced based assessements and tools with which to investigate the role of rights abrogation in the health of populations.