Globalization of the food supply has created conditions favorable for the emergence, reemergence, and spread of food-borne pathogens-compounding the challenge of anticipating, detecting, and effectively responding to food-borne threats to health. In the United States, food-borne agents affect 1 out of 6 individuals and cause approximately 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths each year. This figure likely represents just the tip of the iceberg, because it fails to account for the broad array of food-borne illnesses or for their wide-ranging repercussions for consumers, government, and the food industry-both domestically and internationally. A One Health approach to food safety may hold the promise of harnessing and integrating the expertise and resources from across the spectrum of multiple health domains including the human and veterinary medical and plant pathology communities with those of the wildlife and aquatic health and ecology communities. The IOM's Forum on Microbial Threats hosted a public workshop on December 13 and 14, 2011 that examined issues critical to the protection of the nation's food supply. The workshop explored existing knowledge and unanswered questions on the nature and extent of food-borne threats to health. Participants discussed the globalization of the U.S. food supply and the burden of illness associated with foodborne threats to health; considered the spectrum of food-borne threats as well as illustrative case studies; reviewed existing research, policies, and practices to prevent and mitigate foodborne threats; and, identified opportunities to reduce future threats to the nation's food supply through the use of a "One Health" approach to food safety. Improving Food Safety Through a One Health Approach: Workshop Summary covers the events of the workshop and explains the recommendations for future related workshops.

This book is a history of the diseases of humankind and their causes from earliest times to the present day. It is a tour de force drawing upon the author's extensive work on the history of infection, as well upon evidence drawn from archaeology, history and demography.

While covering human history, civilization, and diseases to reveal why humans are sick with many ailments, this book provides the answers to the questions: "When, why, and how did humans contract all kinds of infectious and chronic diseases?" The increasing occurrence of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes mellitus, asthma and cancer does not simply denote increment in the incidence of diseases, but a pathological phenomenon that reflects the condition of humanity's current environment. With humanity's graduation from the era of hunter-gatherers, infectious diseases and nutritional disorders started to appear at the beginning of the agricultural revolution. Humanity then shifted to an age of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes mellitus, asthma, and cancer, as they entered the era of affluence in the wake of the industrial revolution. Moreover, the disease pattern characterized by such chronic diseases is expected to change again soon to a new trend characterized by neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. When contemplating the path of disease development and transition, we should simultaneously consider two aspects of humanity: as a biological being who adapts to his or her surrounding environment, and as a cultural creator who transforms and recreates the environment, because the changes in human behavior have as much impact on the direction of disease transition as our genes and environment do. Therefore, only after we appropriately understand the history, environment, and disease development of humanity will we be able to establish an adequate strategy for coping with diseases. We would have the upper hand if we have a better understanding of the origin of diseases. In five sections, this book shows how to understand such diseases through the intertwined process within the wide framework of human history.

The Changing Era of Diseases not only explores how to end humanity's suffering from illness, but also attempts to explain the challenging problems that may arise from the control of future disease. It provides a novel perspective on how to understand the changing patterns of disease, disease development, and defense from an evolutionary point-of-view in an effort to ally the life sciences and historical approaches. Topics cover the origin of disease, its pandemic infectious manifestation, chronic and late chronic diseases, strategies of the human body to fight diseases, methods of ending diseases, and future medical systems are featured. The book is a valuable source for researchers interested in systematic approaches to disease and students who are interested in understanding the evolution of diseases and how we have succeeded in fighting them. - Presents the concept of disease by demonstrating the transition of disease, from hunter-gatherers, to chronic diseases in the modern society - Demonstrates how the concept of mechanistic causality does not allow us to properly understand chronic diseases - Discusses the role that science and technology play in prolonging human life spans – and how that will lead to new healthcare challenges in the future

In recent years, a number of chronic diseases have been linked, in some cases definitively, to an infectious etiology: peptic ulcer disease with Helicobacter pylori, cervical cancer with several human papillomaviruses, Lyme arthritis and neuroborreliosis with Borrelia burgdorferi, AIDS with the human immunodeficiency virus, liver cancer and cirrhosis with hepatitis B and C viruses, to name a few. The proven and suspected roles of microbes does not stop with physical ailments; infections are increasingly being examined as associated causes of or possible contributors to a variety of serious, chronic neuropsychiatric disorders and to developmental problems, especially in children. The Infectious Etiology of Chronic Diseases: Defining the Relationship, Enhancing the Research, and Mitigating the Effects, summarizes a two-day workshop held by the Institute of Medicine's Forum on Microbial Threats to address this rapidly evolving field. Participants explored factors driving infectious etiologies of chronic diseases of prominence, identified difficulties in linking infectious agents with chronic outcomes, and discussed broad-based strategies and research programs to advance the field.

"The Nation has lost sight of its public health goals and has allowed the system of public health to fall into 'disarray'," from The Future of Public Health. This startling book contains proposals for ensuring that public health service programs are efficient and effective enough to deal not only with the topics of today, but also with those of tomorrow. In addition, the authors make recommendations for core functions in public health assessment, policy development, and service assurances, and identify the level of government--federal, state, and local--at which these functions would best be handled.