American medical botany :being a collection of the native medicinal plants of the United States, containing their botanical history and chemical analysis, and properties and uses in medicine, diet and the arts /by Jacob Bigelow.

v. 3

Changing healthcare: stakeholder perceptions of the burden of chronic disease and the value of teams, measurements and communication.

Canadian healthcare is changing. Over the course of the past decade, the Health Care in Canada Survey (HCIC) has annually measured the reactions of the public and professional stakeholders to many of these change forces. In HCIC 2008, for the first time, the public's perception of their health status and all stakeholders' views of the burden and effective management of chronic diseases were sought. Overall, Canadians perceive themselves as healthy, with 84% of adults reporting good-to-excellent health. However, good health decreased with age as the occurrence of chronic illness rose, from 12% in the age group 18-24 to 65% for the population =65 years. More than 70% of all stakeholders were strongly or somewhat supportive of the implementation of coordinated care, or disease management programs, to improve the care of patients with chronic illnesses. Concordant support was also expressed for key disease management components, including coordinated interventions to improve home, community and self-care; increased wellness promotion; and increased use of clinical measurements and feedback to all stakeholders. However, there were also important areas of non-concordance. For example, the public and doctors consistently expressed less support than other stakeholders for the value of team care, including the use of non-physician professionals to provide patient care; increased patient involvement in decision-making; and the use of electronic health records to facilitate communication. The actual participation in disease management programs averaged 34% for professionals and 25% for the public. We conclude that chronic diseases are common, age-related and burdensome in Canada. Disease management or coordinated intervention often delivered by teams is also relatively common, despite its less-than-universal acceptance by all stakeholders. Further insights are needed, particularly into the variable perceptions of the value and efficacy of team-delivered healthcare and its important components.

Cardiovascular disease and the changing face of global public health : a focus on low and middle income countries

Eighty percent of the global 17 million deaths due to cardiovascular disease (CVD) occur in low and middle income countries (LMICs). The burden of CVD and other noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) is expected to markedly increase because of the global aging of the population and increasing exposure to detrimental lifestyle-related risk in LMICs. Interventions to reduce four main risks related to modifiable behaviors (tobacco use, unhealthy diet, low physical activity and excess alcohol consumption) are key elements for effective primary prevention of the four main NCDs (CVD, cancer, diabetes and chronic pulmonary disease). These behaviors are best improved through structural interventions (e.g., clean air policy, taxes on cigarettes, new recipes for processed foods with reduced salt and fat, urban shaping to improve mobility, etc.). In addition, health systems in LMICs should be reoriented to deliver integrated cost-effective treatment to persons at high risk at the primary health care level. The full implementation of a small number of highly cost effective, affordable and scalable interventions ("best buys") is likely to be the necessary and sufficient ingredient for curbing NCDs in LMICs. NCDs are both a cause and a consequence of poverty. It is therefore important to frame NCD prevention and control within the broader context of social determinants and development agenda. The recent emphasis on NCDs at a number of health and economic forums (including the September 2011 High Level Meeting on NCDs at the United Nations) provides a new opportunity to move the NCD agenda forward in LMICs.

Burger off!. The Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and the lenguage of scottish populism.

El artículo intenta dar una visión de la forma en la que el lenguaje usado en la prensa escocesa refleja la ideología tradicional del populismo y su relación con el contexto social.

Animal disease and the limits of local knowledge: dealing with ticks and tick-borne diseases in South Africa

Some proponents of local knowledge, such as Sillitoe (2010), have expressed second thoughts about its capacity to effect development on the ‘revolutionary’ scale once predicted. Our argument in this article follows a similar route. Recent research into the management of livestock in South Africa makes clear that rural African livestock farmers experience uncertainty in relation to the control of stock diseases. State provision of veterinary services has been significantly reduced over the past decade. Both white and African livestock owners are to a greater extent left to their own devices. In some areas of animal disease management, African livestock owners have recourse to tried-and-tested local remedies, which are largely plant-based. But especially in the critical sphere of tick control, efficacious treatments are less evident, and livestock owners struggle to find adequate solutions to high tickloads. This is particularly important in South Africa in the early twenty-first century because land reform and the freedom to purchase land in the post-apartheid context affords African stockowners opportunities to expand livestock holdings. Our research suggests that the limits of local knowledge in dealing with ticks is one of the central problems faced by African livestock owners. We judge this not only in relation to efficacy but also the perceptions of livestock owners themselves. While confidence and practice varies, and there is increasing resort of chemical acaricides we were struck by the uncertainty of livestock owners over the best strategies.

Pre-Raphaelitism, science and the arts in 'The Germ'

This article demonstrates for the first time how dense the references to science are within the Pre-Raphaelite periodical 'The Germ' (1850). By reading the essays from this magazine together, as they were first published, it is possible to see how thoroughly the Pre-Raphaelites theorised their artistic project in terms of a particular mid-Victorian ideal of science. At the same time, the magazine became a forum in which the question of how far the arts ought to take account of science could be debated. In this debate, the competing visions of Pre-Raphaelitism discussed in Holman Hunt’s later accounts of the movement can be seen emerging at a very early stage in its history.

November 2009: Government Documents and the Arts

http://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/dacusdocsnews/1041/thumbnail.jpg

Evaluation of experimental vaccination against newcastle disease and the blood proteinogram in ring - necked pheasants(Phasianus colchicus) during breeding season

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)