Who will speak for the children? is the question posed by Judith S. Palfrey, a pediatrician and child advocate who confronts unconscionable disparities in U.S. health care—a system that persistently fails sick and disabled children despite annual expenditures of $1.8 trillion. In Child Health in America, Palfrey explores the meaning of advocacy to children's health and describes how health providers, community agencies, teachers, parents, and others can work together to bring about needed change. Palfrey presents a conceptual framework for child health advocacy consisting of four interconnected components: clinical, group, professional, and legislative. Describing each of these concepts in useful and compelling detail, she is also careful to provide examples of best practices. This original and progressive work affirms the urgent need for child advocacy and provides valuable guidance to those seeking to participate in efforts to help all children live healthier, happier lives.

"Because the discipline of medical ethics has developed with autonomy as its foundation, the field has ignored pediatric ethics. The book is resoundingly successful in its effort to rectify this problem.... [A] pleasure to read." -- Eric D. Kodish, M.D., Director, Rainbow Center for Pediatric Ethics, Case Western Reserve University

Using a form of medical ethnography to investigate a variety of pediatric contexts, Richard B. Miller tests the fit of different ethical approaches in various medical settings to arrive at a new paradigm for how best to care for children. Miller contends that the principle of beneficence must take priority over autonomy in the treatment of children. Yet what is best for the child is a decision that doctors cannot make alone. In making and implementing such decisions, Miller argues, doctors must become part of a "therapeutic alliance" with families and the child undergoing medical care to come up with the best solution.

Children, Ethics, and Modern Medicine combines strong philosophical argumentation with firsthand knowledge of the issues facing children and families in pediatric care. This book will be an invaluable asset to medical ethicists and practitioners in pediatric care, as well as parents struggling with ethical issues in the care of their children.

In this sensitive and richly rewarding book Barbara L. Wood, a clinician with many years' experience working with adult children of the chemically dependent, gives clinicians informed and practical advice on how to treat the damaged self of these individuals. She offers strategies for intervention, along with step-by-step principles that tell the therapist how best to create an environment to help patients.

From sentimental stories about polio to the latest cherub in hospital commercials, sick children tug at the public’s heartstrings. However sick children have not always had adequate medical care or protection. The essays in Children’s Issues in Historical Perspective investigate the identification, prevention, and treatment of childhood diseases from the 1800s onwards, in areas ranging from French-colonial Vietnam to nineteenth-century northern British Columbia, from New Zealand fresh air camps to American health fairs.

Themes include: the role of government and/or the private sector in initiating and underwriting child public health programs; the growth of the profession of pediatrics and its views on “proper” mothering techniques; the role of nationalism, as well as ethnic and racial dimensions in child-saving movements; normative behaviour, social control, and the treatment of “deviant” children and adolescents; poverty, wealth, and child health measures; and the development of the modern children’s hospital.

This liberally illustrated collection reflects the growing academic interest in all aspects of childhood, especially child health, and originates from health care professionals and scholars across the disciplines. An introduction by the editors places the historical themes in context and offers an overview of the contemporary study of children’s health.

In his 2006 State of the Union speech, President George W. Bush asked the U.S. Congress to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, such as the creation of animalûhuman hybrids. The president's message echoed that of a 2004 report by the Pr

Many of our most urgent national problems suggest a widespread lack of concern for the future. Alarming economic conditions, such as low national savings rates, declining corporate investment in long-term capital projects, and ballooning private and public debt are matched by such social ills as diminished educational achievement, environmental degradation, and high rates of infant mortality, crime, and teenage pregnancy. At the heart of all these troubles lies an important behavioral phenomenon: in the role of consumer, manager, voter, student, or parent, many Americans choose inferior but immediate rewards over greater long-term benefits. Choice Over Time offers a rich sampling of original research on intertemporal choice—how and why people decide between immediate and delayed consequences—from a broad range of theoretical and methodological perspectives in philosophy, political science, psychology, and economics. George Loewenstein, Jon Elster, and their distinguished colleagues review existing theories and forge new approaches to understanding significant questions: Why do people seem to "discount" future benefits? Do individuals use the same decision-making strategy in all aspects of their lives? What part is played by situational factors such as the certainty of delayed consequences? How are decisions affected by personal factors such as willpower and taste? In addressing these issues, the contributors to Choice Over Time address many social, economic, psychological, and personal time problems. Their work demonstrates the predictive power of short-term preferences in behavior as varied as addiction and phobia, the effect of prices on consumption, and the dramatic rise in debt and decline in savings. Choice Over Time provides an essential source for the most recent research and theory on intertemporal choice, offering new models for time preference patterns—and their aberrations—and presenting a diversity of potential solutions to the problem of "temporal myopia."

Choosing Unsafe Sex focuses on the ways in which condom refusal and beliefs regarding HIV testing reflect women's hopes for their relationships and their desires to preserve status and self-esteem. Many of the inner-city women who participated in Dr. Sobo's research were seriously involved with one man, and they had heavy emotional and social investments in believing or maintaining that their partners were faithful to them.

Uninvolved women had similarly heavy investments in their abilities to identify or choose potential partners who were HIV-negative. Women did not see themselves as being at risk for HIV infection, and so they saw no need for condoms. But they did recommend that other women, whom they saw as quite likely to be involved with sexually unfaithful men, use them.

The essays commissioned for this book analyze the impact of city living on health, focusing primarily on conditions in the United States. With 16 chapters by 24 internationally recognized experts, the book introduces an ecological approach to the study of the health of urban populations. This book assesses the primary determinants of well-being in cities, including the social and physical environments, diet, and health care and social services. The book includes chapters on the history of public health in cities, the impact of urban sprawl and urban renewal on health, and the challenges facing cities in the developing world. It also examines conditions such as infectious diseases, violence and disasters, and mental illness.