American Indian Health: Innovations in Health Care, Promotion, and Policy

American Indian Health: Innovations in Health Care, Promotion, and Policy. Everett R. Rhoades. M.D., ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. xxiii. 459 pp.     

Dangerous Places: Health, Safety, and Archaeology

Dangerous Places: Health, Safety,and Archaeology. David A. Poirier and Kenneth L. Feder. eds. Westport, CT and London: Bergin and Garvey, 2001. + 249 pp.     

Home Foreclosure,Health, and Mental Health: A Systematic Review of Individual,Aggregate, and Contextual Associations

Background

The U.S. foreclosure crisis intensified markedly during the Great Recession of 2007-09, and currently an estimated five percent of U.S. residential properties are more than 90 days past due or in the process of foreclosure. Yet there has been no systematic assessment of the effects of foreclosure on health and mental health.

Methods and Findings

I applied systematic search terms to PubMed and PsycINFO to identify quantitative or qualitative studies about the relationship between home foreclosure and health or mental health. After screening the titles and abstracts of 930 publications and reviewing the full text of 76 articles, dissertations, and other reports, I identified 42 publications representing 35 unique studies about foreclosure, health, and mental health. The majority of studies (32 [91%]) concluded that foreclosure had adverse effects on health or mental health, while three studies yielded null or mixed findings. Only two studies examined the extent to which foreclosure may have disproportionate impacts on ethnic or racial minority populations.

Conclusions

Home foreclosure adversely affects health and mental health through channels operating at multiple levels: at the individual level, the stress of personally experiencing foreclosure was associated with worsened mental health and adverse health behaviors, which were in turn linked to poorer health status; at the community level, increasing degradation of the neighborhood environment had indirect, cross-level adverse effects on health and mental health. Early intervention may be able to prevent acute economic shocks from eventually developing into the chronic stress of foreclosure, with all of the attendant benefits this implies for health and mental health status. Programs designed to encourage early return of foreclosed properties back into productive use may have similar health and mental health benefits.     

Magic, Science, and Health: The Aims and Achievements of Medical Anthropology and Culture, Health and Illness: An Introduction for Health Professionals. 3rd ed.

Magic, Science, and Health: The Aims and Achievements of Medical Anthropology. Robert Anderson. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1996. + 454 pp.
Culture, Health and Illness: An Introduction for Health Professionals. 3rd ed. Cecil G. Helman. Oxford, England: Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd., 1994. viii. 446 pp.     

Job Strain,Health and Sickness Absence: Results from the Hordaland Health Study

Objectives

While it is generally accepted that high job strain is associated with adverse occupational outcomes, the nature of this relationship and the causal pathways involved are not well elucidated. We aimed to assess the association between job strain and long-term sickness absence (LTSA), and investigate whether any associations could be explained by validated health measures.

Methods

Data from participants (n = 7346) of the Hordaland Health Study (HUSK), aged 40–47 at baseline, were analyzed using multivariate Cox regression to evaluate the association between job strain and LTSA over one year. Further analyses examined whether mental and physical health mediated any association between job strain and sickness absence.

Results

A positive association was found between job strain and risk of a LTSA episode, even controlling for confounding factors (HR = 1.64 (1.36–1.98); high job strain exposure accounted for a small proportion of LTSA episodes (population attributable risk 0.068). Further adjustments for physical health and mental health individually attenuated, but could not fully explain the association. In the fully adjusted model, the association between high job strain and LTSA remained significant (HR = 1.30 (1.07–1.59)).

Conclusion

High job strain increases the risk of LTSA. While our results suggest that one in 15 cases of LTSA could be avoided if high job strain were eliminated, we also provide evidence against simplistic causal models. The impact of job strain on future LTSA could not be fully explained by impaired health at baseline, which suggests that factors besides ill health are important in explaining the link between job strain and sickness absence.     

Globalization, Health, and the Environment: An Integrated Perspective

Globalization, Health, and the Environment: An Integrated Perspective . Greg Guest, ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006. 274 pp.     

Hormones, Health, and Behavior: A Socio-Ecological and Lifespan Perspective

Hormones, Health, and Behavior:. Socio-Ecological and Lifespan Perspective. C. Panter-Brick and C. M. Worthman. eds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 290 pp.     

Revisioning Women, Health, and Healing: Feminist, Cultural, and Technoscience Perspectives

Revisioning Women, Health, and Healing: Feminist, Cultural, and Technoscience Perspectives. Adele E. Clarke and Virginia L. Olesen. eds. New York and London: Routledge, 1999. + 374 pp.     

Biotechnology: Health care,agriculture, industry,environment

New developments in different branches of biotechnology are discussed. The production of peptide hormones, new interferons and other lymphokines by the microbial and cell cultures, and new enzyme inhibitors of microbial origin are the most important for health care and pharmacy. The main direction in research in the agriculture represents the development of the new, very effective methods of nitrogen fixation and the production of animal growth hormones by genemanipulated microorganisms. One of the most important field of application of biotechnology is the chemical industry, c.f. microbial production of polymers and biotransformation of compounds previously produced by chemical methods (acrylamide, adipic acid, naphtalen conversion, etc.). Several novel methods of degradation of the cellulosic materials are mentioned and exploitation of biotechnology in environmental protection is also discussed.