African Society Today: Peasant farmers and the state in Africa: Disaster in rural sub-Saharan Africa has become a regular, almost annual event in recent years. In 1985 it was estimated that 10 million Africans left their homes and fields because they were unable to support themselves and that an additional 20 million were reported to be at risk of debilitating hunger.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

This book considers how rurality interacts with the mental health and wellbeing of individuals and communities in different regional settings. Through the use of international and comparative case studies, the book offers insight into the spatiality of mental health diagnoses, experiences, services provision and services access between and within rural areas. It is the first book to specifically address rural mental health geographies from an international perspective, and will be of interest to researchers and policymakers in rural studies, regional studies, health geography and rural mental health.

There have always been homeless people in the United States, but their plight has only recently stirred widespread public reaction and concern. Part of this new recognition stems from the problem's prevalence: the number of homeless individuals, while hard to pin down exactly, is rising. In light of this, Congress asked the Institute of Medicine to find out whether existing health care programs were ignoring the homeless or delivering care to them inefficiently. This book is the report prepared by a committee of experts who examined these problems through visits to city slums and impoverished rural areas, and through an analysis of papers written by leading scholars in the field.

Throughout much of its history, the United States was predominantly a rural society. The need to provide sustenance resulted in many people settling in areas where food could be raised for their families. Over the past century, however, a quiet shift from a rural to an urban society occurred, such that by 1920, for the first time, more members of our society lived in urban regions than in rural ones. This was made possible by changing agricultural practices. No longer must individuals raise their own food, and the number of person-hours and acreage required to produce food has steadily been decreasing because of technological advances, according to Roundtable member James Merchant of the University of Iowa. The Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Environmental Health Science, Research, and Medicine held a regional workshop at the University of Iowa on November 29 and 30, 2004, to look at rural environmental health issues. Iowa, with its expanse of rural land area, growing agribusiness, aging population, and increasing immigrant population, provided an opportunity to explore environmental health in a region of the country that is not as densely populated. As many workshop participants agreed, the shifting agricultural practices as the country progresses from family operations to large-scale corporate farms will have impacts on environmental health. This report describes and summarizes the participants' presentations to the Roundtable members and the discussions that the members had with the presenters and participants at the workshop.

Psychoneuroimmunology has emerged as a discipline advancing our knowledge of the relationships among psychosocial factors, the central nervous system, the immune system, and disease. The growing volume of evidence suggests that psychological states, including exposure to stressors and the presence of depressive states, may influence health and disease by altering immunologic states. Psychoneuroimmunology, a collaborative work of 50 international experts, expands on the American Psychiatric Association's symposium on this topic to present never-before-compiled scientific research from this evolving field. Maintaining a clinical focus, this book illustrates clinical effects by examining relevant research studies and models including Psychoneuroimmunological factors involved in specific illnesses such as cervical cancer, breast cancer and HIV/AIDS The role psychoneuroimmunology plays in carcinogenesis and the progression of established tumors, as well as findings on the progression of cancer that have general clinical relevance The effects of specific psychotropic medications; the effects of life stressors, bereavement, and and social support; the response to those stressors; and stress management and psychosocial predictors of disease The impacts of gender-specific factors, diurnal variation, and behavioral genetics on the immune function The Stressor-Support-Coping model, which integrates existing psychoneuroimmunology findings and lays the groundwork for use in support group intervention This book is a first step toward organizing psychoneuroimmunology findings into coherent theoretical models and concludes with a look at future clinical applications. Complete with charts, references, and a detailed index, it is the most comprehensive source on psychoneuroimmunology.

Rural people and communities continue to play important social, economic and environmental roles at a time in which societies are rapidly urbanizing, and the identities of local places are increasingly subsumed by flows of people, information and economic activity across global spaces. However, while the organization of rural life has been fundamentally transformed by institutional and social changes that have occurred since the mid-twentieth century, rural people and communities have proved resilient in the face of these transformations. This book examines the causes and consequences of major social and economic changes affecting rural communities and populations during the first decades of the twenty-first century, and explores policies developed to ameliorate problems or enhance opportunities. Primarily focused on the U.S. context, while also providing international comparative discussion, the book is organized into five sections each of which explores both socio-demographic and political economic aspects of rural transformation. It features an accessible and up-to-date blend of theory and empirical analysis, with each chapter's discussion grounded in real-life situations through the use of empirical case-study materials. Rural People and Communities in the 21st Century is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in rural sociology, community sociology, rural and/or population geography, community development, and population studies.