Abramson, J.H. (1992). Survey Methods in Community Medicine. NY: Churchill. Good basic text on public health research methods.

Ahlbom, A. (1993). Biostatistics for Epidemiologists. Boca Raton: Lewis Publishers. Good explanations of biostatistical procedures used by epidemiologists: p-value/confidence intervals; incidence/prevalence; crude/stratified analyses; multivariate models; exposure levels; meta-analysis. If you don't like mathematical formulas, skip it.

American Geological Institute. (2011). Environmental Science: Understanding our Changing Earth. Cengage Learning. An excellent textbook that provides a basic foundation in earth science that you can use to better understand what needs to be done to ensure environmental health. Easy to understand.

Bauman, K. (1980). Research Methods for Community and Health and Welfare. NY: Oxford University Press. Good research text.

Butcheer, Barbars. (2023). What the Dead Know. Learning about life as a New York City Death Investigator. NY: Simon and Schuster. Barbara Butcher is a meidcolegal investigator (MLI) with the New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OOCME). In a can't-put-down memoir, Butcher shares her extraordinary life and experiences of what it's like to try and make sense of how people die in New York City.

With tongue-in-cheek humor, she shares what it's like to investigate deaths while trying to make sense of how people die. Death was never so interesting, or New York City so alive with her retelling of cases she worked on. She asks rhetorical questions of why she was given so many opportunities to question how people lived and why so many ended the ways she found them.

At the same time, this is a very personal journey for Butcher as she exorcises the demons that have plagued her personal life, overcoming alcoholism and then finding meaningful work that gave her purpose, to then overcoming the depression when that work was taken away. Definitely worth reading.

Camus, Albert (1948). The Plague. NY: Vintage International. I read this in 2023, the 3rd year of the COVID-19 Pandemic. What better time than to read this classic about how the Plague changed the lives of the residents in the French Algerian city of Oran and they try to survive the ravages of the bubonic plague?

Perhaps, after 70 years (written in 1947), nothing about the human condition has really changed when faced with pestilence. Over months of quarantine and constant deaths, survivors must not only deal with the reality of the possibility of dying, but with the meaning of what it means to be alive. Camus captured it all so that it remains relevant even today, if only we take time to read his novel.

Cartin, T.J. (1993). Principles & Practices of TQM. Believe it or not, Quality is not only a health-based concept. It became the foundation for an engineering perspective that seeks to proactively address poor manufacturing processes by taking a preventive rather than just a corrective approach. (Hmmm, sounds like Public Health to me.) Quality became the core concept for a whole industry philosophy known as Total Quality Management (TQM). Though written by an electrical engineer, it's actually not that technical that you wouldn't understand it without an engineering degree. A good in-depth but not too overwhelming intro to the whole concept of TQM as it is being applied in Industry today. If you happen to be working in a setting that's trying to adopt TQM, don't be too surprised that it's not being done right. According to Cartin, it can take up to 5 years to implement, and that's with the cooperation of everyone in the entire organization. But, it does work and makes any company that adopts it a lean and mean machine that's competitive enough to survive in a lean and mean competitive marketplace.

I can't see TQM happening in any bureaucracy with more than two levels in the hierarchy (and that's a rarity if there ever was such an organization that would consider itself a bureaucracy). You should thank your lucky stars that the Government Performance and Results Act ever got passed in 1993. Now at least government agencies will have to make an effort to be accountable to the Public. Though not exactly TQM, it will probably take at least 5 years, if not longer to see some results.

TQM probably works best when a business that started off as a mom and pop enterprise turns out to be a smashing commercial success that it can't help but expand. In this kind of fertile environment TQM can really provide a good framework for business growth so that bureaucracies do not take over and snuff out the originality and creativity of the moms and pops who started them out to begin with. Milwaukee, WI: ASQC Quality Press.

Cottrell, R.R., Girvan, J.T., McKenzie, J.F.(2009). Principles and Foundations of Health Promotion and Education. CA: Pearson Benjamin Cummings. The definitive basic textbook that covers what health promotion and health education is all about. Early chapters provide a background of health education as a profession, a history of health and health education, philosophical and theoretical foundations as well as ethics and health education. A chapter covers the credentialing of health educators, and subsequent chapters cover settings where health educators may work in, agencies they may deal with, health education literature and future trends regarding the health education profession. If you are thinking of becoming a health educator, then you should read this textbook.

Dettmer, Philipp (2021). Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive. NY: Random House. If you ever wondered how the immune system works in our body, this is the book to read. Written so that anyone who finished high school should be able to understand, Dettmer systematically describes and explains all the different components of this multi-faceted system that protects and keeps us alive. But, when it doesn't, that is when we die.

Using military analogies Dettmer shows how essential each type of cell and protein work in collaboration with one another to protect the human body against bacterial and viral assaults, as well as cancer cells (to a point), with a basic explanation about COVID-19, until vaccines introduced to battle the virus. This is not a technical book but quite interesting to read. After you are done you will have a very good understanding of how the immune system works and why we should be grateful that it works so hard to keep us alive. Worth reading.

Dever, G.E.A. (1997). Improving Outcomes in Public Health Practice. THE BEST TEXT FOR USING TQM METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH. Simply the best in applying the principles of total quality management to public health practice. Generous examples of how to apply such methods as control charts to evaluating the effectiveness of public health programs. MD: Aspen Publications.

Fairbanks, J., & Wiese, W.H. (1998). The Public Health Primer. CA: Sage Publications. BEST INTRODUCTORY TEXT TO PUBLIC HEALTH PRACTICE. Indisputably the most readable text I've read on public health practice. While Scutchfield & Keck's Principles of Public Health Practice is more detailed about the various disciplines of public health, Fairbanks & Wiese take a more comprehensive approach to providing the best overview I've seen of what it's like to work in Public Health. You can tell the authors have been in the field, and have managed to distill what's most important to know if you want to be a public health professional. Don't miss Chapter 10's magnificient overview of what health planning entails, and a very easy-to-understand section on the various health behavior theories, paradigms, etc. Presenting these concepts in typological fashion is the way these concepts should be taught.

Fitz-Gibbon, C.T., & Morris, L.L. (1987). How to Design a Program Evaluation. #3 of The Program Evaluation Kit, 2nd Edition. CA:Sage Publications. A how-to on designing evaluation studies. Covers Control Group, Time Series and Before-After designs. An excellent chapter on randomizing your population using the HRD (handy randomizing deck) technique.

Friis, R.H. & Sellers, T.A. (1996). Epidemiology for Public Health Practice. MD:Aspen Publishers. A comprehensive reference text for any public health professional, detailing the application of Epidemiology to every day public health tasks. Very good.

Gladwell, Malcolm (2000). The Tipping Point. NY: Little, Brown and Company. A great book that looks at the social phenomenon of cultural change using the analogy of disease epidemics. Connectors, salesmen and mavens are people who spread, by word-of-mouth, societal change. And, the next time someone brags that s/he knows over 150 people you will be able to call her/him a liar. Gladwell's tipping point is the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. Perhaps, public health practitioners may benefit from the author's contention that you can bring about behavioral change by using the right people to spread your message. A must-read.

Gladwell, Malcolm (2024). Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering NY: Little, Brown and Company. It is hard to believe that it's been 25 years since his first book, The Tipping Point, came out. It's hard to believe that I read that book that long ago!

While the basic premise of Gladwell's reason to write this follow-up to that classic was to update what he wrote then, do not be deceived that this is your typical sequel. It is not. It is actually a reassessment how much he (and we) has/have changed in the way he sees things. Oh, but the way he sees things are phenomenal!

Reading his book is like taking a walk in a garden. Everything is so beautiful that you can't help but meander a bit over to whatever catches your eye. You stop awhile to enjoy the flower's beauty, its scent and how it rivals all the other flowers there, but then you remember that you want to see the whole garden, so you find your way back to the main path to continue your visit. In the end, despite the variety of flowers, they sort of all make sense for being part of the garden. This is how you need to appreciate the way Gladwell writes.

He takes you on a trip, points out these interesting places and tells you how they all fit into a larger scheme, or, schemes of things, that are examples or explanations for how Life works. This is what he usually does in his books. So, you end up with a lot of different stories you can share with others. They are always insightful because they really are manifestations of behaviors driven by underlying motives we may not even be aware of, or maybe want to hide.

So, we have stories about how a big city like Miami turns into a haven for Medicare/Medicaid fraudsters and heroin dealers that enriched the city's banks but made it uninhabitable for decent citizens. And, there are artificial perfect communities that are social engineered that spawn epidemics of teen suicides. Then there are institutions like Harvard that manipulates who they admit by instituting non-academic criteria that was originally meant to keep the numbers of Jewish students from entering to maintain the Magic Third. Ah, that Magic Third to avoid the tipping point from happening, when the majority will start to feel threatened by the possibility of that "third" overwhelming their priviledge of being the majority.

Gladwell's narrative about how the spread of COVID-19's early days due to one superspreader who attended a Marriot conference, and several other conferences in row is a good reminder that diseases aren't necessarily widely spread by everyone who are sick, but more by a few who harbor massive amounts of the virus and then interact with numerous people in numerous places.

He also makes a case about how popular TV consumption changed the U.S. population in recognizing the reality of the Holocaust, and perceptions that same-sex marriages are possible. It's social contagion at work for changing the attitudes of many people. Unfortunately, I don't think this is possible now when media consumption is spread out across numerous platforms that could be influenced by how many people can afford how many platforms. People probably have forgotten how the TV network presentation of Roots, watched by millions, got everyone to talk about the existence of slavery in the U.S., and how that experience impacted the lives of Black Americans.

It's not until you get to the final chapter that you realize that the story he really wanted to tell was about the U.S. opoid epidemic and how small area variations, like how some states requiring their doctors to complete prescription froms in triplicate were spared the ravages of drug deaths while most states that didn't have this requirement suffered high drug abuse and mortality.

The drug epidemic, unfortunately, got an inadvertent boost when Purdue Pharma, in trying to maintain its hold on the market, came out with a version of Oxycontin that could not be crushed and snorted (apparently the mode of choice). Those with substance use disorders just moved on to cheaper and easier to use drugs, like heroin and fentanyl. Thanks to aggressive marketing tactics by Purdue targeting the Super Core and Core doctors, who prescribed a lot of Oxycontin, Gladwell makes his case that sometimes the "very, very, very few" can be the cause for major societal issues. So, in summary, read this book. Well, worth your time.

Green, L.W., Kreuter, M.W., Deeds, S.G., & Partridge,K.B. (1980). Health Education Planning: A Diagnostic Approach. CA:Mayfield Publishing Co. The Community Health Education classic that is a must-read for anyone who wants to a certified health education specialist (CHES). The emphasis on the theory behind program planning will allow you to understand much of the health education research being conducted today.

Hale, C.D., Arnold, F., & Travis, M.T. (1994). Planning and Evaluating Health Programs. A Primer. NY:Delmar Publishing Inc. An excellent basic text for the certified health education specialist. How-to chapters on writing proposals, budgets, planning documents. Will help you to understand how all SCSU's courses contribute to the theory behind the skills needed to be a health educator. Covers program planning, evaluation; health planning methods: demography, epidemiology, health services research, budgeting, implementation strategies; management information systems. Includes two sample written plans.

Halperin, W., Baker, E.L., & Monson, R.R. (1992). Public Health Surveillance. NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold. This book can be viewed as a companion text to Teutsch & Churchill's theoretical approach to surveillance. Provides a good overview of the practice of surveillance in public health today. Written mostly by CDC staff, and a few involved with surveillance in the non-public health sector, this text will give you a good idea of just how much theory can actually be applied to real-life situations, and what can and cannot be accomplished with surveillance activities.

Hallinan, Joseph T. (2009). Why We Make Mistakes. NY: Broadway Books. An excellent insightful look at all the different kinds of mistakes that are made, which according to Hallinan can be corrected if we would only look at them objectively. An excellent example is how surgical deaths were reduced simply when anesthesiologists became aware that manufacturing differences caused mistakes in how the anesthesia were administered, and that just by standardizing the knobs reduced deaths. The author finds many examples in our daily lives that cause one to wonder why errors are constantly made when they don't have to be. Excellent read about the human foibles that plague us all.

Ingrassia, L. (2024). A Fatal Inheritance. How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery. Henry Holt & Company. This a history of how heredity cancer came to its own. Hard to believe that for centuries Cancer was considered a random malady, just bad luck for those who developed cancer, coupled with the possiblity of some sort of environmental exposure.

But, as Science moved towards understanding genetics, with better and better molecular science tools, along with researchers curious about why some families would have so many members come down with cancer, at early ages, decided to find out if there was a genetic explanation for why this was happening with some families.

You can view this book as the history of cancer genetics. How scientists eventually meld the growing knowledge of genetics as an explanation for what causes cancer and the possibility of using genetics to identify those with heredity cancers and how our understanding of genetics may one day cure those with diseases that resulted from genes gone wrong.

This book is also about the discovery of the Li-Fraumeni syndrome - a rare, inherited condition that increases the risk of developing multiple types of cance (LFS). While documented in the academic literature for decades the sysndrome was hardly known even among oncologists, until it showed up on an episode of Grey's Anatomy, with over 6 million viewers.

Through painstaking research with blood and skin specimens and compiling the cancer histories of families with numerous members, across several generations, Drs. Frederick Pei Li and Joseph F. Fraumeni Jr. reported the existence of heredity cancers, despite skeptics of the day. They were justified in their assertion that cancer can be hereditary when the TP53 gene mutation was discovered as a cause. We learn that TP53 is a tumor suppressor gene that actually protects the body from developing cancer cells. In its mutated form, it no longer protected the body, and in fact, cancer cells developed without any brakes to its growth. This is a new understanding about cancer - not so much normal cells turning cancerous, but the failure of tumor suppressor genes to do its job to prevent cells from turning cancerous.

Interwined in this interesting history of the Li-Fraumeni syndrome is the story of the author's family, an unfortunate victim of this syndrome, in which 3 of the 4 Ingrassia siblings and a son of the siblings died from various cancers, leaving one sibling, the author, to document the ravages of cancer in his family.

He also covers some of the ethical and heart-wrenching decisions people must make when faced with the possibility that they could be carrying a mutant gene that puts them at risk for cancer. Should they find out? If they do, how will that change their lives in terms of having children, etc. Some just don't want to know.

While Ingrassia wrote this book so his chlidren and future progeny will know about their family history (a gift), he used the opportunity to educate and inform the reader about what cancer genetics is and how important it is know your family history and the impact that has on those affected would live their lives. The one quote I love is:

When we are gone, we live on in memories. Those memories can remain surprisingly vivid for a long time through the people whose lives we have touched, however briefly. (p. 252). It's perhaps the only snippet of immortality we will be allowed to have.

Institute of Medicine. (1994) Health Data in the Information Age. Uses, Disclosure, and Privacy. WASH,DC: National Academy Press. As usual, IOM takes on another issue with health policy ramifications that will continue to plague us into the next century. A good scholarly book on what health data are, the problems with storing such data in national databases, and some ideas on what can be done to safeguard such data for the sake of privacy. Read my review in Data Quality.

Institute of Medicine, Committee for the Study of the Future of Public Health. (1988) The Future of Public Health. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. The DEFINITIVE CRITIQUE ABOUT THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM. If you are interested in Public Health, you should read this book so you know what you are getting into. If you are already in Public Health, well, it's not all in your head....

Kazandjian, V.A. (1995). The Epidemiology of Quality. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers. A good text that covers what is currently known about outcomes research - theory and practice. While the author pitches the use of epidemiologic methods in organizing health data, he doesn't effectively support his contention by the way the chapters are organized. Chapter 8 is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what Continuing Quality Improvement is all about.

Kelman, I. (2020). Disaster by Choice. How our actions turn natural hazards into Catastrophes. Great Britain: Oxford University Press. See BOOK REVIEW": Disaster by choice. How our actions turn natural hazards into catastrophes Ilan Kelman Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020. ISBN: 9780198841340. First published: 04 June 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.452

Kenny, Charles. (2021). The Plague Cycle. The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease. NY:. Scribner. Kenny, an economist offers a unique viewpoint in how infectious disease could be viewed in the broader scheme of things. While Public health and healthcare professionals usually emphasize the impact infectious diseases have on the community and the individual, Kenny talks about how infectious disease epidemics and pandemics have changed the course of history for many countries.

In his historical approach of viewing infectious diseases, Kenny notes the many instances in which wars were determined by not how big the invading or defending armies were, but how many soldiers survived the onslaught of rampant disease epidemics so that the side with the most remaining soldiers would end up being the winners. And, how smallpox ended the Stuart line of the British monarchy because no one was spared the disease till no heirs were left to take the throne.

Much of history reflects how infectious diseases decimated human populations, mainly killing humans during their infancy and childhood. It wasn't until societies could control the spread of disease, through public health strategies, as sanitation and hygiene measures along with medical interventions through vaccines and drugs that prolonged life, did family size decreased because children lived long enough to survive the perils of infectious diseases.

As Kenny notes, "Because of the importance of global connections to the quality of life, by far the largest ecnomic cost of many recent global infeciouts threats, including Covid-19, has been the reaction of people and governments to the threat, rather than the disease itself." p. 184.

And, "The problem both in 1918 and 102 years after wasn't that we didn't know what to do, it was that many countries didn't doe it well." p. 222.

As I am writing this review in February 2024, the world is still experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, now 5 years on. I view this as a failure on the part of inept leadership at the international and national levels. Most disheartening is the poor leadership the World Health Organization has provided in its unfounded non-scientific approaches to containing the pandemic.

From the skewed pronouncements from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (NOT a medical doctor) shaming developing countries to donate vaccines to underdeveloped countries, that people in developed countries can forgo the recommended 2-vaccine protocol, at that time, so vaccines can be made available for poorer countries, and then making no effort to provide the logistics necessary to distribute and administer the vaccines, resulting in the waste of millions of donated doses. Additionally, the heavy-handed pronouncement that all countries must used their virus-naming convention by using the Greek alphabet, only to skip a Greek letter for fear of offending a world leader because the letter sounded like that leader's name offer blatant examples of just how chaotic the approaches were to addressing the global pandemic. The only person at WHO who is still doing her job is the scientific lead, Maria Van Kerkhove.

The Trump administration that was in place at the start of the pandemic offered no leadership whatsoever in addressing the growing pandemic that ranged from downplaying the seriousness of the disease by Trump to his spread of misinformation in the effectiveness of unapproved drugs (Hydroxychloroquine) to injecting bleach to hiring people unqualified to provided guidance (Atlas), demeaning Dr. Fauci, to the spread of anti-Asian hate because of his refusal to take any responsibility for doing what needed to be done. Additionally, states were offered no support for addressing the pandemic locally because Trump, via Kushner, treated the national stockpile as their personal reserve to curry favor for personal gain.

This book should be a must-read for infectious disease specialists, public health practitioners, healthcare provides, and policy makers because, as Kenny said:
"The early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic augured a similar combination of slow reaction and opportunities missed alongside the stirrings of a historically unprecedented response. Hopefully next time, we'll act faster and save many more lives. Because the other lesson driven home by the four decades between HIV and Covid-19 is that, thanks to expanding agriculture, dense populations, and global links, there'll be a next time." p. 174.

Kimball, M.A. (2003). The Web Portfolio Guide. Creating Electronic Portfolios for the Web. NY: Longman. A manual that tries to meet the needs of several audiences - students, graduates and teachers - on how to create an online portfolio. Though Kimball devotes only one chapter to the academic professional, the entire book reads like it was meant for the teacher rather than for students. For sure, to make the most of this textbook, if it were to be used in class, the teacher must be Net-saavy enough to provide the technical expertise needed to make the most of the manual. Though repetitious on some points, it does provide a sequential approach to the planning, designing and revising of a Web portfolio, and does provide information about graphics and the hands-on tasks needed to keep the portfolio current. Provides insight on what to think about in putting together any portfolio (now being preferred over just a mere resume or CV for some professions) to show off what you can do to a potential employer.

Kosecoff, J., & Fink, A. (1982). Evaluation Basics. A Practitioner's Guide. CA: Sage Publications. Excellent for research design.

Lorig, K., Stewart, A., Ritter, P., Gonzalez, V., Laurent, D., & Lynch, J. (1996). Outcome Measures for Health Education and other Health Care Interventions. CA: Sage Publications. The appendices are the most useful part of this text, which extrapolates from the authors' experiences with the Chronic Disease Management Program. Samples of various health measurement surveys are included with some information about how to use them for evaluating health education programs.

Luntz, F. (2007). Words that Work. It's not What You Say, It's What People Hear. NY: Hyperion. Luntz is a political consultant whose sideline is studying how language impacts the message. Through the use of focus groups and other qualitative methods, he has come up with ways to get the message across to the audience he wants to reach. But his manta throughout the book is "It's not what you say, it's what people hear," which is sage advice for any health educator trying to get a message across. The book is worth reading if you can overlook his partisan views.

Mailbach, E., & Marrott, R.L. (editors) (1995). Designing Health Messages. CA: Sage Publications. An excellent literature review approach to developing health education/health promotion campaigns to get your health message across. An excellent attempt in showing how to apply health behavior theory to the real-world application of health education in a world of the multiple subpopulations you want to reach. Can we change health behavior? It depends.

McKenzie, J.F., Neiger, B.L, & Thackeray, R. (2009). Planning, Implementing and Evaluating Health Promotion Programs. A Primer. Fifth Edition. San Francisco, CA: Pearson Benjamin Cummings. Remains the definitive textbook for program planning, implementation and evaluation. This textbook contains updates from previous editions regarding the revised areas of responsibility and competencies for certified health education specialists, expanded sections about the Generalized Model for Program Planning, intervention mapping, program rationale writing, new data collection processes, measurement and sampling, the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA), the Community Readiness Model (CRM), best practices and intervention development, mapping community capacity, budget preparation, grant funding, safety and ethical issues surrounding program implementation, purposes for evaluation, process evaluation and pre- and pilot-testing.

McKenzie,J.F, Pinger, R.R. & Kotecki, J.E. (2005). An Introduction to Public Health. Fifth Edition MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. An excellent introductory textbook to the practice of Public Health. Comprehensively covers the scope of what Public Health is all about. Best textbook ever!

Mukherjee, Siddhartha. (2010). The Emperor of All Maladies NY: Scribner. The DEFINITIVE history of cancer! Mukherjee, a physician, is a gifted writer who made reading about the most dreaded disease to plague mankind for centuries a must-read. As he provides an historical narrative of how cancer has been around for so long, he also provides a companion narrative of the various treatments for various cancers over time. He offers the hope that we may someday conquer the dreaded disease in its many manifestations because of how our medical knowledge has changed Man's approach to conquering the disease. Reading this book will help you appreciate that cancer cells, like humans, will do anything to survive. We just have to survive longer than they do.

Muraskin, L.D. (1993). Understanding Evaluation: The Way to Better Prevention Programs. U.S. Department of Education: Westat, Inc. While the emphasis is on drug abuse prevention programs, it is really a manual for developing program process/outcome/impact evaluations. Straightforward approach by outlining what questions you want to ask when evaluating the effectiveness of any social service/public health program.

National Cancer Institute. (2005). ; This free publication, based on the work of Drs. Barbara K. Rimer and Karen Glanz, provides a succinct, yet comprehensive textbook on health behavior theories and concepts that everyone working in Public Health should read and know. Explanations are to the point and supported by examples that practitioners can relate to. What I found most useful are Table 11, "Summary of Theories: Focus and Key Concepts" and Figure 10, "Using Theory to Plan Multilevel Interventions." Both will provide basic information, at a glance, of what you need to think about when planning a public health program.

Page, R.M., Cole, G.E. & Timmreck, T.E. (1995). Basic Epidemiological Methods and Biostatistics: A Practical Guide Book. Boston, MA:Jones and Bartlett Publishers. 1995. THE BEST EPIDEMIOLOGY/BIOSTATISTICS TEXTBOOK FOR LEARNING ALL THE BASICS. Besides providing the best history of Epidemiology I've seen in print, the authors take the reader through epidemiologic investigations, and give the best explanation of hypothesis testing that can be found in a biostatistics text.

Reagen, P.A. & Brookins-Fisher, J. (2002). Community Health in the 21st Century. CA: Benjamin Cummings. A decent, broad introduction to the world of Public Health, with an emphasis on women's health.

Roueche, B. (1988). The Medical Detectives. NY: Truman Talley Books.A great read about epidemiologists at work. Makes me want to get back to Epidemiology.

Royse, David (1995). Research Methods in Social Work. 2nd Edition. Chicago:Nelson-Hall Publishers. BEST RESEARCH METHODS BOOK FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE. Takes a very easy-to-understand view on how to conduct research. Excellent chapters on survey research, questionnaire development, how to collect, analyze data and report your findings.

Sales, Nancy Jo (2016). American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers. NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Journalist Sales interviewed over two hundred girls between thirteen and nineteen from various socioeconomic backgrounds and a variety of demographic locations across the U.S. about their use of social media. Regardless of their circumstances they are rabid and excessive users of social media. This use has affected their growth and development and their relationship with boys in social settings, both online and offline.

A terrifying picture emerges of teen girls developing their self-worth based on how they feel they are perceived on social media. Sadly, it's more about how they want to be perceived, and that is the unending pursuit to gather as many likes as they can from anonymous online users. Sadly, females are viewed as sexual objects because of the prevalent use of porn that portrays women in a hypersexualized way that demeans women on many levels.

The girls Sales interviewed are now attending college. So, (in 2019) I asked my students about some of things I read in the book to see how true the things I read in this book were, and sadly, Sales is right on mark with her description of Generation Z. Yes, getting likes on social media is important. Taking bathroom selfies does happen, etc., etc. Everyone should read this book, especially parents of girls, and girls themselves, For girls/women of all ages, this is a must-read.

Schneider, M. J. (2011). Introduction to Public Health (3rd ed). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett. A very good textbook about the basics of Public Health practice, the various issues facing practitioners today. Excellent coverage of everything pertaining to public health practice.

Scutchfield, F.D., & Keck, C.W. (1997). Principles of Public Health Practice. NY: Delmar Publishers. THE DEFINITIVE TEXT ON PUBLIC HEALTH PRACTICE. Though Public Health has been around for over a hundred years, practitioners have only decided to come together recently to document what we should be doing if we are to call ourselves public health professionals. Why it has taken so long is anyone's guess. The impetus for this effort can be probably attributed to the Institute of Medicine (IOM)'s 1988 critique of public health practice as it existed in the early 80s - which the book does reference and tries to address the problems IOM has identified. A must for ALL public health practitioners.

Skloot, Rebecca (2010). The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks NY: Crown Publishers. This is the fascinating story of an African American woman who died from an extremely rare aggressive form of cervical cancer, but her cancer cells continue to live on even today, some 50+ years later. These cells have been used for medical research all these years and have tremendously enhanced Science's understanding of many diseases and phenomena that would not have been possible without the availability of living human cells that can be grown outside the human body.

Skloot has done a wonderful job in raising the reader's awareness of who this woman was and the contributions her cells have made to Science and Medicine. You will also get to learn about her life, her family and what happened to her children and grandchildren. And, you will really want to know all about Henrietta, and how wonderful she was to people who knew her, and how great the loss was when she died, at the age of 30.

You will also develop an appreciation of the lives of African-Americans growing up in the South and the kinds of family relationships they grew up in. And, you will understand why it is so important to communicate clearly what it is you want to say to avoid any misunderstanding. Perhaps, the saddest lesson to come out of this book is how no one in the medical establishment ever bothered to explain to Henrietta's family what happened to her. It took this writer to right the wrong experienced by this family for so many years. If I could request an author to write my biography, I would request Skloot. Great book, not to be missed!

Stroup, D.F., & Teutsch, S.M. (1998). Statistics in Public Health: Quantitative Approaches to Public Health Problems. NY: Oxford University Press. THE BEST FOR USING STATISTICS IN PUBLIC HEALTH. An excellent textbook on the appropriate use of statistics in solving public health problems. An excellent chapter on the basic principles of statistics is worth buying the book for. Covers everything from conducting needs assessments to program planning and development and how to best use statistics in such tasks. A companion text for Teutsch's other great book, Principles of Public Health Surveillance.

Sullivan, L.M. & Galea,S. (Editors) (2019). Teaching Public Health. MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Times have changed and so must the education of public health professionals. This textbook offers a variety of viewpoints from a number of academics now teaching public health students at the college level. They all offer their personal views of how to reach students and teach them the skills they will need heading out the door. A few have offered their curricula and others evidence of why their approach works. As a practice profession, for sure, giving students the opportunity to actually work in various settings is a great way to introduce them to what it's like out in the field. Overall, a good introduction to the pedagogy in a field meant to educate future practitioners.

Tenner, Edward (1996). Why Things Bite Back. Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences. NY: Vintage Books. Is a futurist only as good as his predictions realized? A decade after its publication, Tenner's book is still as relevant as ever. Though I didn't mean to "test" his hypotheses, it just took me this long to get to this book, in 2005, and it was worth all the time I could spend with it (among everything else I had to do and read along the way). All the "ghosts in the machines" we nonchalantly refer to when things don't work right may be "spirits" we need to appease, after all!

Tenner posits that while Man has made the most of Technology to improve our lives, our creations have come back to haunt our peace of mind. Unlike God's creations, which are basically self-perpetuating and ecologically appropriate, what Man creates, however, through Technology cannot sustain themselves, but must be nurtured with vigilance. When all we were looking for were time-saving devices to make our lives easier (i.e., washing machines), the broader outcome turns out to be the need to use the time we have saved in doing tedious tasks of daily living to maintaining the systems we thought would take care of themselves (self-correcting, right!).

Tenner sees the development of systems (which is the basic idea behind quality assurance and quality management) as not the blessings we thought they would be, but a way to complicate our need to sustain them by spending more time keeping them running smoothly, or heaven help us all if something should break down. Because Technology is so good at standardizing things, personalization has lost its edge to the point that we no longer own things, but they own us. He is probably right we may never see the paperless office we envisioned when computers and fax machines replaced typewriters, and we will always need the car mechanic (who must now be computer saavy) when the dream machines being developed are electronic systems that cannot be tinkered with by the weekend mechanic. Can "I, Robot" be far behind?

Tenner actually spends several chapters on how Technology has affected Medicine and Public Health (this book covers everything, believe me), and actually provides a very insightful explanation as to why medical errors have become the par for course, when we think that an MRI will reveal everything we will ever need to know about our health. To some extent, this is true, but we will need someone now who knows how to read those MRIs.... As Health Care becomes more reliant on machines to diagnose and treat, we can only suffer from the revenge effects of complicating the whole process of diagnosis and treatment.

Perhaps, Tenner's perspective explains why the fracturing of health services we are seeing today is really a result of our growing and unrealistic expectations of what Medicine should be doing for us - that Technology can surely cure everything that ails us, regardless of how we treat our bodies and minds. And, what about Public Health? The ability to build high smokestacks allowed industries to comply with local clean air standards only to spread their pollution over a broader geographic area...

Tenner is the 21st Century Renaissance Man who will hopefully not meet the fate of Cassandra. His book is a must-read for developing a mindset that will be needed to understand the sometimes self-defeating approaches Civilization takes towards Life. Technology must be understood in order to be harnessed. While Technology's children has brought much joy into our lives, they must be disciplined so they will grow up to be productive adults that will contribute than be a weight on society.

Teutsch, S.M. & Churchill, R.E. (1994). Principles of Public Health Surveillance. NY: Oxford University Press. An in-depth look at the practice of public health surveillance and how to analyze surveillance data. Bound to be a classic for the discipline.

The American Geological Institute. (2011).Environmental Science: Understanding our Changing Earth. Cengage Learning. A great introduction to Earth Science that provides a basic understanding of why humans need to be stewarts of the environment.

Tsiaras, Alexander (2005). The Invision Guide to A Healthy Heart. NY: HarperCollins Publishers. A visually stunning book about cardiovascular health illustrated with medical imaging graphics. If you want to read about how to have a healthy heart, what disease does to the heart, and how to prevent disease, this book will captivate you from beginning to end.

Tufte, E.R. (1997). Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. CT: Graphics Press. An art historian look at how data are presented in a variety of formats. Not very technical, heavily illustrated. Has one chapter about statistical analysis. Has the best write-up (of all textbooks) about Snow's investigation of the 1854 London Cholera Epidemic.

U.S.H.H.S./U.S. Public Health Service/CDC. (1992). Using Chronic Disease Data. Handbook for Public Health Practitioners. Using available US government statistics for research: mortality data, hospital discharge data, behavioral risk factor data; age-adjustment techniques; categorizing diseases; legislative mandates regarding data.

Weiss, M.J. (2000). The Clustered World.Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Here is the primer about Geodemographics, a new up and coming approach to marketing that can probably be used to great advantage in public health. The premise of geodemographics is we are where we live, and what we consume. This is really an ideal approach for targeting populations for public health interventions when most of what affects our health include where we live and what we consume (almost common sense if you think about it). Highly recommended.

Yates, K. (2020). The Math of Life & Death. 7 Mathematical Principles that Shape Our Lives. NY: Scribner. In 7 chapters, Kit Yates provides an interesting overview of how mathematics is very much a part of our daily lives. And, it doesn't all have to do with calculations. Because of our numerophobia, we tend to gloss over when numbers become a part of the conversation, which is why mathematics is misused and abused in all walks of life.

Because of mathematical errors, like the misplacement of a decimal point, wrong medication dosages can lead to death, as well as a mix-up in different measurements (liters vs. gallons) can result in running out of plane fuel while a country is switching over to the metric system. Yates shows how the misuse of statistics in the courtroom to sway the jury can result in wrongful imprisonment, and how the mistiming of warning alarms resulted in a bombing that could have been prevented.

Throughout the book, Yates offers real-world and interesting examples of how we really can't do with numbers at the same time offering historical gems on how we ended up with clocks having 24 hours, each hour with 60 minutes, and each minute with 60 seconds. His final chapter "Susceptible, Infective, Removed: How to Stop an Epidemic" was my favorite since it covered Public Health. It was too bad this book came out before the pandemic. I am sure Yates would have offered an enlightened look that how bad our record-keeping has been from underreporting cases and deaths to the lack of testing that should have been done to assess the prevalence of COVID-19. Maybe his next book can be devoted entirely to the topic.

Finally, Chapter 6 on the use of algorithms for everything offers a warning of overdependence on its use for everything. Sure, we want things automated, and we want it done in as orderly fashion as possible. Nevertheless, we should not forget that those who write the algorithms are humans, and humans make mistakes.

I have written enough computer programs to know that you really can tell a computer what to do. And, it will do it exactly the way your coding tells it to do. But, the interpretation still has to be done by humans, and they can always misinterpret the numbers. And, the programmer can introduce a bias in what data are to be included or excluded, which, of course, would result in possibly inaccurate data that could be misinterpreted, adding insult to injury.

It's like people today can plug in a set of numbers into a spreadsheet, and wah-la, a beautiful graph will show up that could be totally meaningless. And, "Even if some of the most complex mental tasks can be farmed out to an algorithm, matters of the heart can never be broken down into a simple set of rules. No code or equation will ever imitate the true complexities of the human condition." (p. 242).

I truly enjoyed this book that sought to explain mathematical concepts in a very understandable way. Yates does provide tables with numbers to illustrate his points, but no formulas that you would need to memorize like when you took it in school to understand what he is trying to say. You will come out with an appreciation of why we need numbers in our lives. After all, what would a birthday be without a number?

Zimmer, Carl (2025). Air-borne. The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe. NY: Dutton/Penguin Random House.

"Here for the first time in medical history is clear experimental proof of air-borne infection." Roderick Helffron (May 1939), p. 141.

Zimmer, a journalist, provides an excellent history of what we call Aerobiology. Aerobiologists study the organisms and particles of biological origin - known together as bioaerosols - that float around in our planet's atmosphere. (https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/what-is-nasas-aerobiology-lab/).

We are provided with a chronological overview of how mankind had viewed how we interacted with the air we breathe and how that had affected our well-being over hundreds of years of human history. The concept of "miasma" divided scientists and philosophers of their day. Obviously, air that smelled of stench was not good for health, without necessarily understanding the causes of the stench. Amazingly, "learned" men of their time argue, not necessarily out of scientific understanding, but more from ego about why they were right and others were wrong.

What I found truly amazing that air-borne illness was denied its rightful place, even up to the early 2020s of the COVID-19 pandemic when the World Health Organization pushed droplet nuclei spread of SARS-Cov-2 over air-borne spread, despite the scientific evidence that supported it, from as far back at 1939.

An even more disturbing revelation was the irresponsible lies told by Trump to the American people even before WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020. In his February 7, 2020 discussions with Bob Woodward who was writing a book, "Trump said, 'It goes through the air.' The president said that the new disease was "more deadly than even your strenuous flus."" (p. 348).

Trump then went on to say everything was under control and he wanted everything to be opened by Easter (April) of that year. Yet, during the March lockdown, he did nothing to address the pandemic, denied states support to address the pandemic, did nothing to build a federal intrastructure for testing people for COVID-19, or develop surveillance systems to track the spread of the disease. As a result, hundreds of thousands Americans died in 2020 from COVID-19.

Zimmer emphasized the works fo William Firth and Mildred Weeks Wells for the early experiments they conducted showing how TB was an air-borne illness repeatedly throughout the book. By the book's end, I am still not sure if mankind has learned anything from all the air-borne illnesses we have suffered through in the past 200 years. For sure, I have seen very little infrastructure built to prepare us for the inevitable H5N1 pandemic that is sure to come, and most definitely, an air-borne illness.

Aday, L.A., Begley, C.E., Lairson,D.R. & Slater, C.H. (1998). Evaluating the Healthcare System. Effectiveness, Efficiency and Equity. IL: Health Administration Press. Slightly dated when I read it - like it's now AHRQ and not AHCPR, and HEDIS is no longer 2.5 (1/2002), it still remains an excellent basic textbook on how to develop rational health policy. The authors take a truly Public Health approach by looking at health services as part of a more global picture of what Health is all about. It introduces the "Deliberative Justice" paradigm to ensuring equitable health policy that makes more sense than the distributive justice approach of health services and the social justics approach of public health. Don't miss this book if you are interested in health policy.

Friel, S. (2019). Climate Change and the People's Health. NY: Oxford University Press. Much is said about climate change but very little about what all these changes mean to population health. This small book offers an overview of the kinds of climate change we are undergoing (global warming, flooding, natural disasters, etc.) and how they will impact people living in their way. Coastal flooding from global warming will displace millions who live and make their living in these coastal areas. Where will they go? They will suffer infectious diseases brought on by unsanitary conditions. Who will pay for treatment? Friel offers her theory of consumptagenic societies, where everything is driven by what we consume and the demand that generates more consumption. To meet these demands, production of goods and services have gone global to reduce cost but causes inequity in many areas in the process. Do we really need everything we buy?

Howard, P.K. (1996). The Death of Common Sense. How Law is Suffocating America. NY: Random House. Written by a lawyer, with integrity, who obsessess over the loss of what Law is supposed to accomplish in society. A good look at how environmental laws (unfortunately) have become so complicated that they no longer serve the original purposes they were intended for. Also, an insider's account of why proliferation of laws justifies a similar proliferation of lawyers and bureaucrats to make sense of it all while the public mourns the death of....

Institute of Medicine (1993). Access to Health Care in America. WASH,DC: National Academy Press. One of IOM's weaker studies concerning the development of indicators to assess to health services. This study was undertaken by those in IOM who were troubled by what they perceived as problems of health services access, particularly those who are part of disadvantaged groups. While the indicators they have selected are useful, the rationale for using these indicators is muddled by biases that are understandable but inexcusable for reports of this nature. Appendices are in-depth looks at access problems for those with HIV, drug abuse and the homeless. Unfortunately, these looks are more essays than evaluative in their approach and may turn off those who are looking for "harder" facts to support what may seem obvious but unfortunately cannot be used to develop good health policy.

Monheit,A.C., Wilson,R., Arnett,III,R.H. (editors) (1999). Informing American Health Care Policy. The Dynamics of Medical Expenditure and Insurance Surveys, 1977-1996. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. A thoughtful collection of historical essays that serve to document the development and utilization of surveys for policymaking. Really provides an inside look at how federal bureaucrats do their best to conduct survey research while dealing with the ever-changing tide of politics and uncertain funding. This book will definitely provide a good background as to why you can forget about ever getting any trend analyses done with health insurance data as it has been collected for close to a quarter of a century, and why the complexity of health insurance today is just begging for a one-payor solution that would streamline health services research that can be used for good policy making.

Sales, Nancy Jo (2016). American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers. NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Journalist Sales interviewed over two hundred girls between thirteen and nineteen from various socioeconomic backgrounds and a variety of demographic locations across the U.S. about their use of social media. Regardless of their circumstances they are rabid and excessive users of social media. This use has affected their growth and development and their relationship with boys in social settings, both online and offline.

A terrifying picture emerges of teen girls developing their self-worth based on how they feel they are perceived on social media. Sadly, it's more about how they want to be perceived, and that is the unending pursuit to gather as many likes as they can from anonymous online users. Sadly, females are viewed as sexual objects because of the prevalent use of porn that portrays women in a hypersexualized way that demeans women on many levels.

The girls Sales interviewed are now attending college. So, (in 2019) I asked my students about some of things I read in the book to see how true the things I read in this book were, and sadly, Sales is right on mark with her description of Generation Z. Yes, getting likes on social media is important. Taking bathroom selfies does happen, etc., etc. Everyone should read this book, especially parents of girls, and girls themselves, For girls/women of all ages, this is a must-read.

U.S. G.A.O. (May, 1997).(GAA/HEHS/GGD-970138) Managing for Results. Analytic Challenges in Measuring Performance. An evaluation of how federal agencies are doing in trying to meet the GPRA (Government Performance and Results Act of 1993) requirements. While it is understandable why federal agencies balk at coming up with performances measures, it is an important step towards professional accountability to those who pay the bills.

Winchester, S. (2005). A Crack in the Edge of the World. America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 NY: HarperCollins Publishers. A truly fascinating read about an event that happened 100 years ago. It is easy how fast we can forget the catastrophic events that happened to those who lived through it long enough to give eyewitness accounts of such happenings. Winchester is a wonderful writer who manages to make an historical event interesting and suspenseful. He spends the first half of the book providing the various perspectives that will serve as a firm foundation for the reader to appreciate the final description of the actual event.

You get learn about geology (if Geology was taught this way in the schools, maybe there would be more geologists), the cultural temperature of the 1800s, a mini history lesson of the wild West (if History was taught.....), and a wonderful history of the city of San Francisco itself, and its place in California history and politics. Those interested in Public Health may find this book useful in studying the aftermath of natural disasters, and all the problems that affect the Public Health in such instances.

However, the spirit of this book is a travelogue of a passionate geologist who travels the wonders of the Western U.S., taking in the wondrous sites of places that will eventually succumb to the eventual catastrophic outpouring of the tectonic plates that move under us, most notably the infamous San Andreas Fault. Don't say that you have not been warned.... Excellent read.

Zimmer, Carl (2025). Air-borne. The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe. NY: Dutton/Penguin Random House.

"Here for the first time in medical history is clear experimental proof of air-borne infection." Roderick Helffron (May 1939), p. 141.

Zimmer, a journalist, provides an excellent history of what we call Aerobiology. Aerobiologists study the organisms and particles of biological origin - known together as bioaerosols - that float around in our planet's atmosphere. (https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/what-is-nasas-aerobiology-lab/).

We are provided with a chronological overview of how mankind had viewed how we interacted with the air we breathe and how that had affected our well-being over hundreds of years of human history. The concept of "miasma" divided scientists and philosophers of their day. Obviously, air that smelled of stench was not good for health, without necessarily understanding the causes of the stench. Amazingly, "learned" men of their time argue, not necessarily out of scientific understanding, but more from ego about why they were right and others were wrong.

What I found truly amazing that air-borne illness was denied its rightful place, even up to the early 2020s of the COVID-19 pandemic when the World Health Organization pushed droplet nuclei spread of SARS-Cov-2 over air-borne spread, despite the scientific evidence that supported it, from as far back at 1939.

An even more disturbing revelation was the irresponsible lies told by Trump to the American people even before WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020. In his February 7, 2020 discussions with Bob Woodward who was writing a book, "Trump said, 'It goes through the air.' The president said that the new disease was "more deadly than even your strenuous flus."" (p. 348).

Trump then went on to say everything was under control and he wanted everything to be opened by Easter (April) of that year. Yet, during the March lockdown, he did nothing to address the pandemic, denied states support to address the pandemic, did nothing to build a federal intrastructure for testing people for COVID-19, or develop surveillance systems to track the spread of the disease. As a result, hundreds of thousands Americans died in 2020 from COVID-19.

Zimmer emphasized the works fo William Firth and Mildred Weeks Wells for the early experiments they conducted showing how TB was an air-borne illness repeatedly throughout the book. By the book's end, I am still not sure if mankind has learned anything from all the air-borne illnesses we have suffered through in the past 200 years. For sure, I have seen very little infrastructure built to prepare us for the inevitable H5N1 pandemic that is sure to come, and most definitely, an air-borne illness.

Zimmer, Carl (2018). She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity NY: Dutton/Penguin Random House.

In 1605, Spanish physician, Luis Mercado published De morbis hereditariis-On Heredity Diseases. It was the very first book published on the subject of heredity diseases, based on observations he made while treating patients from royalty to the working class. The most famous was the Habsburg family that ruled for several generations in Spain, only to be left without an heir to the throne when its tactic to preserve its sangre azul (blueblood) by intermarriage among family members resulted in miscarriages and children with weak constitution.

This tome should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in the field of genetics, from geneticists to genetic counselors, medical personnel who want to specialize in the field of genomics, basic science researchers dealing with genetics.

Though it is not written as a textbook, it is organized more like a journalist would, a compilation of interesting anecdotes that depict genetic concepts. For his research, Zimmer had his genetic profile analyzed by numerous specialists in the field who went on to explain the meaning Zimmer's DNA. Aside from the usual explanations like Mendel's contribution to the field are stories about how the field evolved, from explaining hereditary diseases to the use of eugenics to justify the abuse and treatment of disabled people, to developing superior humans like farmers who selectively breed for desired characteristics.

He also covers the promises and foibles of genetic engineering. Though the science is promising for treatment of genetic diseases, there are ethical concerns over the use of the rapidly expanding technology that has created many slippery slopes. Designer babies may not be too far off, emphasizing that such access is more determined by who can afford it vs. those who cannot.

Interesting factoids include how boys will forever have the presence of their mother's cells in their bodies, and how their fetal cells can still be found in their mothers. That twins share cells, even if one twin dies in utero. That sometimes there is no genetic evidence to show her children is hers, without additional testing beyond the usual DNA testing.

I have to admit, because of its length of 574 pages, it was a challenge to read and lug around. Only one typo, so that's not bad for a book this length. It is, however, well worth reading, and you will definitely learn a lot about genetics. Your knowledge will be current to 2018, when the book was published, and it will help you to follow the new advancements in the field without getting lost. For example, it was only in July, 2025, when I finished this book, that there was an article written about "3-parent babies." (https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/07/16/nx-s1-5468304/mitochondria-disease-gene-donation-three-parents) Voilà, I knew exactly what the article was talking about!

Search Betty C. Jung's Web site Custom Search

Search the Entire Internet Custom Search

Published on the Web: September 1, 1999; February 24, 2001
R303
Comments, suggestions: