3 results for "Public Health"

Gabby: a story of courage and hope

Giffords, Gabrielle D.
"An extraordinary tale…of love, of unthinkable trauma, of a heroic partnership… Redefining for the world what it means to be a fighter.”—People The New York Times bestseller by Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, astronaut and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly—an incredibly inspiring story of adventure, public service, love, and overcoming tragedy. Now a documentary film titled Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down. The shooting of Gabby Giffords and nineteen others, six of whom were killed, took place in Tuscon, Arizona on January 8, 2011, in the early days of what has become a tragic and devastating escalation of mass shootings across the United States. Gabby had just begun her third term serving in the Arizona House of Representatives and was meeting with her constituents when she was shot in the head. She was evacuated to the hospital in critical condition. Her husband, Mark Kelly, a retired U.S. Navy captain and an astronaut for NASA at the time, flew directly from Houston and dedicated himself to Gabby’s bedside as she fought to survive and recover. This book chronicles the lives of these two extraordinary American figures—the careers that led them to one another; their passion for public service; and the grueling medical challenges and hard-fought journey to Gabby’s significant recovery. In 2013, Gabby and Mark launched Americans for Responsible Solutions, a non-profit and Super-Pac which would later become Giffords, an American advocacy and research organization focused on promoting gun control. That same year, Gabby received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in recognition of the political, personal, and physical courage she demonstrated in her public advocacy for policy reforms aimed at reducing gun violence.
Scribner 2011 309 pages

Why Our Health Matters

Andrew Weil
A landmark book that shows us exactly how we have let health and medicine become a crisis in our society and what we can all do to resolve it Healthcare is no longer just a public issue; for millions of Americans it is now a crisis on their own doorstep. Costs of medical care today are a leading cause personal bankruptcy. Although policy makers have weighed in on all sides, in this book, bestselling author Andrew Weil, M.D. identifies the root of the problem. He shows us exactly how we have become embroiled in the present situation and provides a solution that will not only make healthcare affordable, but will also put each one of us on the road to optimum health. Dr. Weil states that we have a right to good healthcare that is effective, accessible, and affordable. Many Americans would be surprised to know that our national health is far from the best in the world, even though we spend more money on it than any other country. The World Health Organization recently rated America thirty-seventh in health outcomes, on par with Serbia. Tackling head-on The Three Major Myths of American Medicine, Dr. Weil shows how medical schools fail to give future doctors the education they need to care for patients, how insurance companies have destroyed our opportunity to get excellent care, and how pharmaceutical companies have come to rule our lives. The solution involves nothing less than the creation of a completely new culture of health and medicine in this country, one that we can each start building today.
Thorndike Press 2009 393 pages

The Allocation of Health Care Resources: An Ethical Evaluation of the 'QALY' Approach

McKie, John,Singer, Peter,Richardson, Jeff
The competition for limited health care resources is intensifying. We urgently need an acceptable method for deciding how they should be allocated. But the goods that health care produces are of very different kinds. Health care can extend the lives of children and of older people. It can make it possible for a person to walk, when without health care that person would be permanently bedridden; and it can reduce the pain and distress of people who are terminally ill. How can we possibly decide which of these - and many more - diverse achievements of health care are more deserving than others? We need a common unit by which we might be able to measure these very different goods. The Quality-Adjusted Life Year, or QALY, is the most developed proposal for such a unit of measure. In this book a distinguished team of ethicists and economists defend the core of the QALY proposal: that health care resources should be used so as to produce more years of life, of the highest possible quality. This leads to a discussion of such fundamental questions as whether all lives are of equal value, whether health care should be allocated on the basis of need and whether the QALY approach incorporates an adequate account of fairness or justice. The result is the most thorough account yet of the ethical issues raised by the use of the QALY as a basis for allocating health care resources.
Routledge 2020-06-30 168 pages