Chronic conditions such as arthritis, heart disease, and Parkinson disease are the principal cause of all sickness and death in the United States and represent the vast majority of health care expenditures. Although we now live in a world dominated by chronic conditions, health care is still organized around a commitment to treating acute illnesses. Meeting the Challenge of Chronic Illness examines current deficiencies in chronic illness care and explores ways to improve it. Addressing the challenges of shifting from the primacy of acute illnesses to the predominance of chronic conditions, the authors identify the components necessary to reorganize and reform health care: properly prepared health care workers; involved patients and families; appropriate use of new technologies, especially information systems; an appropriate role for prevention; and the creation of funding approaches that will provide necessary incentives. This book calls on policy makers, health care providers, and educators to address one of the greatest challenges facing the health care system.

The Institute of Medicine study Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001) recommended that an interdisciplinary summit be held to further reform of health professions education in order to enhance quality and patient safety. Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality is the follow up to that summit, held in June 2002, where 150 participants across disciplines and occupations developed ideas about how to integrate a core set of competencies into health professions education. These core competencies include patient-centered care, interdisciplinary teams, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, and informatics. This book recommends a mix of approaches to health education improvement, including those related to oversight processes, the training environment, research, public reporting, and leadership. Educators, administrators, and health professionals can use this book to help achieve an approach to education that better prepares clinicians to meet both the needs of patients and the requirements of a changing health care system.

Caring for Chronically Ill Patients Building on a thoughtful understanding of the organizational, financial, and clinical issues involved in chronic illness, Christianson and his colleagues provide a useful road map to the design and implementation of team-based chronic illness management. A must read for policy makers and managers wishing to meet the challenge of providing quality and efficient care to the chronically ill. --Arnold D. Kaluzny, professor of health policy and administration, School of Public Health and Senior Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill This practical new book offers the most current information on how leaders of top clinical programs have implemented exemplary and cost-conscious programs to manage the care of four key chronic diseases: asthma, arthritis, diabetes, and coronary artery disease. Grounded in research, the book introduces a model and practical tool that can be used by healthcare organizations to effectively treat chronically ill patients. And, because the model and tool are based on the actual experiences of ongoing programs, the authors discuss organizational strategies that will help overcome the inevitable resistance to change. A step-by-step program is outlined for health care executives and caregivers who want to implement these best practices in their institutions. With a wealth of information and illustrative examples, the authors explain how a health care organization can restructure and revitalize its approach to managing chronic illness...without breaking the bank.

This Open Access book highlights the ethical issues and dilemmas that arise in the practice of public health. It is also a tool to support instruction, debate, and dialogue regarding public health ethics. Although the practice of public health has always included consideration of ethical issues, the field of public health ethics as a discipline is a relatively new and emerging area. There are few practical training resources for public health practitioners, especially resources which include discussion of realistic cases which are likely to arise in the practice of public health. This work discusses these issues on a case to case basis and helps create awareness and understanding of the ethics of public health care. The main audience for the casebook is public health practitioners, including front-line workers, field epidemiology trainers and trainees, managers, planners, and decision makers who have an interest in learning about how to integrate ethical analysis into their day to day public health practice. The casebook is also useful to schools of public health and public health students as well as to academic ethicists who can use the book to teach public health ethics and distinguish it from clinical and research ethics.

This WHO publication calls for the transformation of healthcare workforce training to better meet the needs of caring for patients with chronic conditions. While the world is experiencing a rapid escalation in chronic health problems training of the healthcare workforce has generally not kept pace. To provide effective care for chronic conditions the skills of health professionals must be expanded to meet these new complexities. The publication presents a new expanded training model based on a set of core competencies that apply to all members of the workforce. First the workforce needs to organize care around the patient or in other words to adopt a patient-centred approach. Second providers need communication skills that enable them to collaborate with others. They need not only to partner with patients but to work closely with other providers and to join with communities to improve outcomes for patients with chronic conditions. Third the workforce needs skills to ensure that the safety and quality of patient care is continuously improved. Fourth the workforce needs competencies in information and communication technology which can assist them in monitoring patients across time in using and sharing information. Finally the workforce needs to adopt a public health perspective in their daily work including the provision of population-based care that is centred around primary health care systems. Each competency is described in detail and supplemented with diverse country examples of how it has been implemented.