Type 2 diabetes is a social pandemic caused by toxic environments - high in stress and sugar, low in opportunities to exercise or feel good about yourself - and a lack of power. Millions are suffering and being blamed for it; communities devastated; health systems bankrupted. Diabetes: Sugar-Coated Crisis describes the social sources of the toxic environment, covering deeper causes, too: the stress and inequality built into our modern culture, the traumas and loss of community that make people vulnerable to illness. It reveals the medical mistreatment of diabetes - from kicking diabetics off medical insurance to underfunding diabetes education, from over-emphasizing drugs to giving corporate-influenced dietary advice. Social diseases require social solutions. Social approaches focus on empowering people to take better care of themselves, bringing people together for mutual support, and changing the environment that causes illness. The first book to bring to life effective social approaches to wellness, this book: reports success stories from communities around the world highlights creative and effective medical programs developed by groundbreaking health care providers describes ways that individual self-care plus family and community involvement, combined with health care system support, can control chronic illness, change environments, and transform people's lives, and includes valuable diabetes self-care tips and resources.

A majority of chronic illnesses have no medical cure. The best therapy, asserts the author, is self-care. This comprehensive guide suggests healthy behaviors and holistic approaches while acknowledging the barriers people face in applying them.

From the best-selling author of Why We Get Fat, a groundbreaking, eye-opening exposé that makes the convincing case that sugar is the tobacco of the new millennium: backed by powerful lobbies, entrenched in our lives, and making us very sick. Among Americans, diabetes is more prevalent today than ever; obesity is at epidemic proportions; nearly 10% of children are thought to have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. And sugar is at the root of these, and other, critical society-wide, health-related problems. With his signature command of both science and straight talk, Gary Taubes delves into Americans' history with sugar: its uses as a preservative, as an additive in cigarettes, the contemporary overuse of high-fructose corn syrup. He explains what research has shown about our addiction to sweets. He clarifies the arguments against sugar, corrects misconceptions about the relationship between sugar and weight loss; and provides the perspective necessary to make informed decisions about sugar as individuals and as a society.

This innovative ethnographic study animates the racial politics that underlie genomic research into type 2 diabetes, one of the most widespread chronic diseases and one that affects ethnic groups disproportionately. Michael J. Montoya follows blood donations from "Mexican-American" donors to laboratories that are searching out genetic contributions to diabetes. His analysis lays bare the politics and ethics of the research process, addressing the implicit contradiction of undertaking genetic research that reinscribes race’s importance even as it is being demonstrated to have little scientific validity. In placing DNA sampling, processing, data set sharing, and carefully crafted science into a broader social context, Making the Mexican Diabetic underscores the implications of geneticizing disease while illuminating the significance of type 2 diabetes research in American life.

Over the last twenty years, type 2 diabetes skyrocketed to the forefront of global public health concern. In this book, Mari Armstrong-Hough examines the rise in and response to the disease in two societies: the United States and Japan. Both societies have faced rising rates of diabetes, but their social and biomedical responses to its ascendance have diverged. To explain the emergence of these distinctive strategies, Armstrong-Hough argues that physicians act not only on increasingly globalized professional standards but also on local knowledge, explanatory models, and cultural toolkits. As a result, strategies for clinical management diverge sharply from one country to another. Armstrong-Hough demonstrates how distinctive practices endure in the midst of intensifying biomedicalization, both on the part of patients and on the part of physicians, and how these differences grow from broader cultural narratives about diabetes in each setting.

Training, credentialing and employment opportunities for Community Health Workers (CHW) are expanding across the nation. Foundations for Community Health Workers, 2nd Edition provides a practical and comprehensive introduction to essential skills for CHWs, with an emphasis on social justice, cultural humility, and client-centered practice. Real-life case studies and quotes from working CHWs illustrate challenges and successes on the job. For additional details, please visit: http://wileyactual.com/bertholdshowcase/

With the increased incidence of chronic diseases, the demand for skilled health promoting professionals has surged. Many professionals working in the field of health promotion lack the necessary tools to apply the skills in their practice. Health Promotion in Nursing Practice provides insight not only into the principles of health promotion, but also how to translate them into practice. Covering traditional theories, how to use them in practice and research, the synergy model as a new framework for health promotion, and relating empirical research, Health Promotion in Nursing Practice incorporates chronic diseases, program planning, and evaluation. Included in this text are chapter objectives, summaries, articles, key terms, review questions, case studies and exercises to bring theory into practice.