Health Capital and Sustainable Socioeconomic Development PDF

Preface

This coedited book addresses an unmet need in the marketplace by posing management strategies from various international sources for improving healthcare outcomes. With the recent outbreaks of worldwide calamities such as famine, natural disasters, pandemics, proliferation of substance abuse, posttraumatic syndrome states, and other related disease containment concerns, there is increased international attention to disease detection, surveillance, prevention, containment, and treatment methods. There is also a growing realization of the important role that health capital plays in increasing the value of a nation's well-being, that is, on the quality of a nation's socioeconomic development. This concept has been referred to as the health capital of a nation.

The international community is paying more attention to mounting evidence showing the strong relationship that exists between human capital and sustainable socioeconomic development.

Because of the above and the increasing upsurge in health risk factors influencing quality of life, it is timely, necessary, and important that this book be published. This book contains chapters from interdisciplinary authors in the international health and sustainable development fields to advance this new discourse about the importance that population health has on psychosocial and economic viability and propose, for discussion sake, and the need for improving healthcare management policy as we progress through the new millennium. All those interested in maintaining their own good health status, students of international health, practicing professionals of various disciplines, public health administrators, and those who are just curious about how global health can affect their own well-being will be able to find useful information.

International development scholars and interdisciplinary healthcare practitioners from all around the globe were invited to submit original manuscripts addressing psychosocial and economic developments from a various range of disciplines including law, economics, medicine, psychology, nursing, and sociology.

Issues of development, environment, and health are closely related. Ill health hampers economic and social development by triggering a vicious cycle of unsustainable resource use that challenges a country's economic stability. In addition, education for socioeconomic development is compromised by conditions and behaviors that undermine the physical and emotional well-being that makes learning possible.

Users of this book will be encouraged to

• Incorporate ideas into an educational program about global health. 

• Implement new policies to improve healthcare services and improve the health capital of populations.

• Improve public administration of healthcare systems at the macro- and microeconomic levels.

• Compare other sources of information and foster intellectual debate and discourse.

• Discover, or investigate, new and previously unknown sources of information for the general public as well as healthcare professionals.

• Inform/educate interested non-healthcare professionals or those in other fields that have an impact on the healthcare sector.

• Stimulate research into these issues.

• Supplement knowledge already held or provide more in-depth information about these healthcare issues.

• Encourage a more curious attitude in some of the general public to learn more about these issues and improve the quality of their lives.

• Influence others to take a more active approach through professional education, political involvement, or financial contributions to healthcare activities.

The book targets an international audience working or studying in a large range of topics including healthcare, public health, medicine (including psychology, psychiatry, infectious diseases, etc.), and law (including international public law, human rights, international rights of the child, policy analysis, sociology, economy, etc.).

The various topics developed are illuminated in a readable, interesting, and pertinent manner. The reader will be able to understand the various politico-legal and macro- and microeconomic issues that influence the international healthcare sector in providing healthcare services and the influence this industry has on the life opportunities and well-being of world inhabitants and their societies.

This book presents a new and more comprehensive overview and perspective about this topic that has never before been presented. The intended audience needs this book to enhance present understanding of healthcare financing, management, and service provision and the effect that the efficient versus inefficient management of this sector exerts on the overall socioeconomic condition of the international community.

It also focuses on the importance of the effect of health capital on psychosocial and socioeconomic sustainability. It provides a more varied and comprehensive international perspective by inviting participation from experts from around the world with a more in-depth basis for academic and political discourse.

This book has brought a wide-ranging group of specialists together to cover a major information void in fields associated with health and sustainable development. This book is not only anticipated by current stakeholders in the field of sustainable development including researchers, policy makers, and academicians, but also by a diverse readership with an interest in economics, health, mental health, law, and international development. With its international panel of authors and the quality of their affiliations (e.g., Columbia University, World Health Organization [WHO], CARE Perú, University of Cologne, etc.), this book is an indispensable reference as a scientific state of the art, a guideline, and a didactic tool on health and international sustainable development. It will also help the readers to better contribute to the development and progress of the nation's health capital.