Roads To Health

In Roads to Health, G. Geltner demonstrates that urban dwellers in medieval Italy had a keen sense of the dangers to their health posed by conditions of overcrowding, shortages of food and clean water, air pollution, and the improper disposal of human and animal waste. He consults scientific, narrative, and normative sources that detailed and consistently denounced the physical and environmental hazards urban communities faced: latrines improperly installed and sewers blocked; animals left to roam free and carcasses left rotting on public byways; and thoroughfares congested by artisanal and commercial activities that impeded circulation, polluted waterways, and raised miasmas. However, as Geltner shows, numerous administrative records also offer ample evidence of the concrete measures cities took to ameliorate unhealthy conditions. Toiling on the frontlines were public functionaries generally known as viarii, or "road-masters," appointed to maintain their community's infrastructures and police pertinent human and animal behavior. Operating on a parallel track were the camparii, or "field-masters," charged with protecting the city's hinterlands and thereby the quality of what would reach urban markets, taverns, ovens, and mills. Roads to Health provides a critical overview of the mandates and activities of the viarii and camparii as enforcers of preventive health and safety policies between roughly 1250 and 1500, and offers three extended case studies, for Lucca, Bologna, and the smaller Piedmont town of Pinerolo. In telling their stories, Geltner contends that preventive health practices, while scientifically informed, emerged neither solely from a centralized regime nor as a reaction to the onset of the Black Death. Instead, they were typically negotiated by diverse stakeholders, including neighborhood residents, officials, artisans, and clergymen, and fostered throughout the centuries by a steady concern for people's greater health.

Roads matter to people. This claim is central to the work of Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox, who in this book use the example of highway building in South America to explore what large public infrastructural projects can tell us about contemporary state formation, social relations, and emerging political economies.Roads focuses on two main sites: the interoceanic highway currently under construction between Brazil and Peru, a major public/private collaboration that is being realized within new, internationally ratified regulatory standards; and a recently completed one-hundred-kilometer stretch of highway between Iquitos, the largest city in the Peruvian Amazon, and a small town called Nauta, one of the earliest colonial settlements in the Amazon. The Iquitos-Nauta highway is one of the most expensive roads per kilometer on the planet.Combining ethnographic and historical research, Harvey and Knox shed light on the work of engineers and scientists, bureaucrats and construction company officials. They describe how local populations anticipated each of the road projects, even getting deeply involved in questions of exact routing as worries arose that the road would benefit some more than others. Connectivity was a key recurring theme as people imagined the prosperity that will come by being connected to other parts of the country and with other parts of the world. Sweeping in scope and conceptually ambitious, Roads tells a story of global flows of money, goods, and people—and of attempts to stabilize inherently unstable physical and social environments.

The book tells the stories of 39 patients with incurable lung cancer. It aims to help patients, families, and healthcare providers understand the experience of living with cancer. It also invites reflections on the essential questions of meaning, resilience, and coping with adversity in life. The author is a family doctor, teacher, and researcher who is also a stage 4 lung cancer patient himself. He is patient #40. Facing one's mortality, patients with cancer develop an urgency to find meaning in life. They struggle with the illness, its emotional impact, and the consequences of treatments. However, with time, reflection, and support from others, they develop resilience. Cancer patients often are not passive. Instead, they choose different strategies to maintain and restore their health. They also leverage a variety of approaches to cope better with their struggle. The book is for cancer patients who are tarrying at the limits of time. It is also for those who live around patients with cancer: caregivers, families and friends, and health care providers. People who struggle with other illnesses will also find aspects of their story reflected here. Also, the ones who have experienced a crisis of identity will discover elements of their story here as well. By sharing the experiences of the forty authentic individuals, the book opens the space for them to teach others. This book is about the essence of the human experience at its limits. It is for every reader.

A comprehensive overview of the shocking state of our nation's infrastructure and what must be done to fix it

In Roads to Health, G. Geltner demonstrates that urban dwellers in medieval Italy had a keen sense of the dangers to their health posed by conditions of overcrowding, shortages of food and clean water, air pollution, and the improper disposal of human and animal waste. He consults scientific, narrative, and normative sources that detailed and consistently denounced the physical and environmental hazards urban communities faced: latrines improperly installed and sewers blocked; animals left to roam free and carcasses left rotting on public byways; and thoroughfares congested by artisanal and commercial activities that impeded circulation, polluted waterways, and raised miasmas. However, as Geltner shows, numerous administrative records also offer ample evidence of the concrete measures cities took to ameliorate unhealthy conditions. Toiling on the frontlines were public functionaries generally known as viarii, or "road-masters," appointed to maintain their community's infrastructures and police pertinent human and animal behavior. Operating on a parallel track were the camparii, or "field-masters," charged with protecting the city's hinterlands and thereby the quality of what would reach urban markets, taverns, ovens, and mills. Roads to Health provides a critical overview of the mandates and activities of the viarii and camparii as enforcers of preventive health and safety policies between roughly 1250 and 1500, and offers three extended case studies, for Lucca, Bologna, and the smaller Piedmont town of Pinerolo. In telling their stories, Geltner contends that preventive health practices, while scientifically informed, emerged neither solely from a centralized regime nor as a reaction to the onset of the Black Death. Instead, they were typically negotiated by diverse stakeholders, including neighborhood residents, officials, artisans, and clergymen, and fostered throughout the centuries by a steady concern for people's greater health.

How did seven low- and middle-income countries, inspired by the landmark Alma-Ata Declaration, dramatically improve citizen health by focusing on primary health care? The Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978 marked a potential turning point in global health, signaling a commitment to primary health care that could have improved the safety of air, food, water, roads, homes, and workplaces in all 180 countries that signed it. Unfortunately, progress in many countries stalled in the 1980s. The declaration was, however, embraced by a number of countries, where its implementation led to substantial improvement in citizen health. Achieving Health for All reveals how, inspired by Alma-Ata, the governments of seven countries executed comprehensive primary health care systems, deploying new cadres of community-based health workers to bring relevant services to ordinary households. Drawing on a set of narrative case studies from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Nepal, Ghana, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam,the book explains how a primary health care focus succeeded in improving population health. The book also conclusively demonstrates that comprehensive, multisector, community-controlled, and population-level primary health care is a viable strategy that, against the odds, has led to sustainable, scalable good health at lower cost. Bringing together a group of experts to analyze the forty-year legacy of the Alma-Ata Declaration, Achieving Health for All is a fascinating look at the work needed to transform nations from places that make people sick to places where they stay healthy. An inspiring array of lessons learned along the way shows how readers can make policies that support the health of all people. Contributors: Onaopemipo Abiodun, Vinya Ariyaratne, John Koku Awoonor-Williams, Kedar Prasad Baral, Ayaga A. Bawah, Pedro Más Bermejo, Fred N. Binka, David Bishai, Carolina Cardona, Dennis Carlson, Chala Tesfaye Chekagn, Hoang Khanh Chi, Svea Closser, Luc Barrière Constantin, Zufan Abera Damtew, Marlou de Rouw, Nadia Diamond-Smith, Philip Forth, Mignote Solomon Haile, Nguyen Thanh Huong, Taufique Joarder, Alice Kuan, Seblewengel Lemma, Sasmira Matta, Ahmed Moen, Rituu B. Nanda, Frank K. Nyonator, Ferdous Arfina Osman, Claudia Pereira, Henry B. Perry, James F. Phillips, Meike Schleiff, Melissa Sherry, Rita Thapa, Kebede Worku

Road Map to Heath is a fabulous book that gives you 7 steps to alter your destination. it will give you the tools to empower you to make simple, daily changes to reach optimal health and resources to easily incorporate these changes into your busy life.