The United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals call for the establishment of Good Health and Well-being and target a universal digital healthcare ecosystem by 2030. However, existing technology infrastructure is ineffectual in achieving the envisioned target and requires massive reconfiguration to achieve its intended outcome. This book suggests a way forward with fair and efficient digital health networks that provide resource efficiencies and inclusive access to those who are currently under-served. Specifically, a fair and efficient digital health network that provides a common platform to its key stakeholders to facilitate sharing of information with a view to promote cooperation and maximise benefits. A promising platform for this critical application is 'cloud technology' with its offer of computing as a utility and resource sharing. This is an area that has attracted much scholarly attention as it is well-suited to foster such a network and bring together diverse players who would otherwise remain fragmented and be unable to reap the benefits that accrue from cooperation. The fundamental premise is that the notion of value in a digital-health ecosystem is brought about by the sharing and exchange of digital information. However, notwithstanding the potential of information and communication technology to transform the healthcare industry for the better, there are several barriers to its adoption, the most significant one being misaligned incentives for some stakeholders. This book suggests among other findings, that e-health in its true sense can become fair and efficient if and only if a regulatory body concerned assumes responsibility as the custodian of its citizens' health information so that 'collaboration for value' will replace 'competition for revenue' as the new axiom in delivering the public good of healthcare through digital networks.

A bold reevaluation of Spinoza that reveals his powerful, inclusive vision of religion for the modern age

Spinoza is widely regarded as either a God-forsaking atheist or a God-intoxicated pantheist, but Clare Carlisle says that he was neither. In Spinoza's Religion, she sets out a bold interpretation of Spinoza through a lucid new reading of his masterpiece, the Ethics. Putting the question of religion centre-stage but refusing to convert Spinozism to Christianity, Carlisle reveals that "being in God" unites Spinoza's metaphysics and ethics. Spinoza's Religion unfolds a powerful, inclusive philosophical vision for the modern age-one that is grounded in a profound questioning of how to live a joyful, fully human life.

Like Spinoza himself, the Ethics doesn't fit into any ready-made religious category. But Carlisle shows how it wrestles with the question of religion in strikingly original ways, responding both critically and constructively to the diverse, broadly Christian context in which Spinoza lived and worked. Philosophy itself, as Spinoza practiced it, became a spiritual endeavor that expressed his devotion to a truthful, virtuous way of life. Offering startling new insights into Spinoza's famously enigmatic ideas about eternal life and the intellectual love of God, Carlisle uncovers a Spinozist religion that integrates self-knowledge, desire, practice, and embodied ethical life to reach toward our "highest happiness"-to rest in God.

Seen through Carlisle's eyes, the Ethics prompts us to rethink not only Spinoza but also religion itself.

The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is a classic tragedy of destruction following errors in judgment. Naomi Zack presents social and political aspects of this disaster as it unfolded in public health through federal and local government structures, society, culture, and the economy. Federalism combined with politics in facing and denying the SARS-CoV2 pandemic has revealed both weaknesses and strengths.
Preparation was woefully inadequate for the 2020 tidal wave of COVID-19 that broke over the medical system, the educational system, the lives of the poor, essential workers, racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and women, especially. Rhetoric and conspiracy theories flourished, as Red and Blue Americans politicized the pandemic. Police reform became urgent after billions witnessed George Floyd's death. The war of the statues evoked new conflicts over free speech.
The X-ray nature of COVID-19 has revealed the United States to itself, in character, incompetence, superstition, and injustice, but also in dedication to caring for others and abiding resilience. The core of democracy held after the 2020 election but vigilance is newly important and required. As a record of this US Plague Year and an argument for why we need to prepare for Climate Change, as well as the next pandemic, this book is an essential resource for every student, scholar, and citizen.

This book comprehensively analyzes COVID-19 and its impact as well as the response from the perspectives of humanities and social sciences. This book covers topics ranging from geopolitical relations to regional integration, public health governance and even the evolution of professional practices in the time of COVID-19. It constitutes a precious and timely interdisciplinary reference for anyone aspiring not only to grasp the origins and dynamics of the present challenge, but also to identify future opportunities for further growth and holistic progress for humanity.

The use of digital tracking technologies is a widespread phenomenon. Millions of people around the world now track, document, and analyse their physical activities, vital functions, and daily habits through wearable devices, apps, and platforms. The aim is to assess and improve health, productivity, and wellbeing. The current Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the uptake of tracking technologies.

At the heart of this trend lies the quantification of the body, deemed as a key element in medical practice and personal self-care. While often couched in positive promotional terms that highlight its value to users' mental, emotional, and physical health, it is also raising a host of issues and concerns that are at once ontological, ethical, political, social, legal, economic, and aesthetic.

The Quantification of Bodies in Health aims to deepen understanding of this growing phenomenon and of the role of self-tracking practices in everyday life. It brings together established and emerging authors working at the intersection of philosophy, sociology, history, psychology, and digital culture, while bridging between philosophical and empirical approaches.

A timely topic of extreme relevance and significance, The Quantification of Bodies in Health constitutes a useful and unique companion for anyone interested in the study of body quantification and self-tracking practices.

Why is there such a deep partisan division within the United States regarding how health care should be organized and financed-and how can we encourage politicians to band together again for the good of everyone?

For decades, Democratic and Republican political leaders have disagreed about the fundamental goals of American health policy. The modern-day consequences of this disagreement-particularly in the Republicans' campaign to erode the coverage and equity gains of the Affordable Care Act-can be seen in the tragic and disparate impact of COVID-19 on the country. In Crossing the American Health Care Chasm, Donald A. Barr, MD, PhD, details the breakdown in political relations in the United States. Why, he asks, has health policy-which used to be a place where the two sides could find common ground-become the nexus of fiery political conflict?

From Harry S. Truman's failed attempt to enact a plan for national health insurance to the recent efforts of President Donald J. Trump, Barr's historical analysis also touches on every presidential administration in between. Tracing the bipartisanship that developed over the four decades following the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, Barr explains why this spirit of cooperation has given way to such a seemingly unbridgeable ideological chasm. Exploring how political conflict affects health care organization, financing, and delivery, Barr also offers a detailed analysis of the multiple attempts on the part of congressional Republicans and the Trump administration either to weaken or to repeal the ACA. Crossing the American Health Care Chasm offers a series of steps that policy makers can take to improve the national health care situation and provide a basis for ongoing bipartisanship as we continue to confront the policy challenges facing our country.

Ultimately, Barr argues, this divide is more dangerous than ever at a time when health care costs continue to skyrocket, the number of uninsured Americans is rising, many state governments are chipping away at Medicaid, and the GOP has not let up in its efforts to dismantle the ACA. This book will be of profound interest both to those responsible for carrying out national health care policy and to those who study health policy from an academic perspective.

Challenging conventional welfare state research, the authors compare the Nordic countries with the welfare states of the market-oriented democracies of the Baltic area, discussing welfare state theories, family policy regimes and welfare state models. Top international contributors provide a better understanding of the complex inequalities that families and individuals are facing in the 21st century, and cover important topics such as poverty, social insurance and family policy in the Nordic and Baltic areas.

Challenges to the Welfare State will be of great interest to social policy scholars and policy makers, particularly those with an interest in the Baltic and Nordic countries. It will also be a welcome addition to the literature for students interested in family policy and pension protection reforms, and those with a general interest in the contemporary welfare state studies in Europe.

This book provides key insights into the nature of officer-recipient relationships and shows how they have non-negligible impacts on the way recipients feel and think about themselves and their lives using mixed methods and subjective and psychosocial well-being approaches. The importance of placing well-being at the heart of policy is widely accepted. Yet, it is far less clear how this can be translated into practice. Discussion has tended to focus on the outcomes of policy and particularly on the metrics to assess well-being. While these are important debates, they can obscure an equally vital dimension: the processes of policies and the effect that implementation can have on the experiences - and ultimately well-being outcomes - of the recipients. This is the subject matter of this book. By taking the world-renowned case of the Oportunidades-Prospera conditional cash transfer programme in Mexico, it provides an in-depth account of interactions between officers and recipients and how these influenced programme delivery and well-being outcomes. It particularly scrutinizes the implementation of the health conditionalities of Oportunidades-Prospera by physicians working in the health clinics of rural and indigenous localities.

This book is the first of its kind about healthcare reform efforts in Kazakhstan since its independence within the context of the public sector reform movement. The book provides a brief background of Kazakhstan and its Soviet legacy and the country's efforts to modernize the health system, before creating an overview of the existing system, the reforms since independence, and the future of healthcare in Kazakhstan. This book will be of interest to policymakers, analysts, and development economists.

This book synthesizes research about the effects of food insecurity on children, families, and households, emphasizing multiple pathways and variations across developmental contexts. It focuses on emerging new methods that allow for a more refined approach to practice and policy. The volume provides a brief overview of the topic, and additional empirical chapters pose and address unanswered research questions. It concludes with a short commentary, providing recommendations for future research and policy and yielding a significant and timely contribution to advance developmental scientific knowledge and promote its use to improve the lives of children and families.

Featured areas of coverage include:

• The effects of early food insecurity on children's academic and socio-emotional outcomes.
• The effects of household food insecurity on children with disabilities.
• Early childhood access to Women, Infants, and. Children (WIC) and school readiness.
• Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and adolescent mental health.

Food Insecurity in Families with Children is an essential resource for policy makers and related professionals as well as graduate students and researchers in developmental, clinical, and school psychology, child, youth and family policy, public health, and social work.

Through a practical introduction to the policies of the American welfare state-a wide-ranging subject much discussed but seldom described-this concise volume details the four main areas of social welfare policy: housing assistance, nutrition assistance, income assistance, and medical assistance.

In plain, approachable language, author Brian J. Glenn explains, for example, how Section 8 housing vouchers function, what the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is, how Medicare has developed, and what Temporary Aid for Needy Families does. Especially in the era of Covid-19 and a recession, there is a need for citizens and students to understand the American social safety net. The American Welfare State is written in a manner that allows a complete novice to understand these programs in a brisk and comprehensive fashion that is both short enough to read over a couple of nights in a course and yet detailed enough for the programs to be understood at quite a nuanced level.

In this thoroughly updated second edition, author Brian J. Glenn outlines the ways in which social welfare programs differ, sometimes dramatically, from locality to locality. To help students understand how these policies function, Glenn looks at the support households receive in five cities: Boston, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. This approach provides not only a geographic spread but also an examination of the variability of support, giving the reader a feel for the range of funding levels and also the variety of ways programs can be implemented. In short, this book is a fully updated and handy teaching and learning tool that fills a huge gap in the literature on a subject that many want to teach but often lack the resources to do.

This book discusses preventive actions that have led to reduction in the prevalence of child labor across the world over the 21^st century. It identifies exemplary programs in the area of community prevention that have had exceptional results; for example, the involvement of children in hazardous work globally being reduced by half. It documents a wide range of contexts where concerted action has counteracted social permissiveness towards child labor, including psycho-educational interventions in preventing early school leaving and conditional cash benefits which counteract family poverty. The book presents a set of evidence-based practices that are particularly useful for psychologists, educators, and social workers. More broadly, this book is also of interest to policymakers, professionals, and activists involved in child protection policy or in implementing programs to promote the psychological well-being of children.

Historical Dictionary of the Syrian Uprising and Civil War introduces readers to the events and main players that shaped the conflict in Syria since 15 March 2011, as the country entered a new era in its modern history. The "Syrian Revolution," was part of the Arab Spring that was launched in Tunisia, Egypt, and other countries in the Middle East in late 2010. The Syrian situation turned into a winter, which merits such an all-encompassing book that reveals the complex dynamics of the Syrian civil war. Many of the key players, places, and unfolding events were making headlines for a short period before vanishing from memory, but this book records their emergence and influence. The book traces the political opposition, initially in the form of street-level unrest, targeting the rule of the al-Asad family that ruled for over five decades. The book provides a picture of the fighting groups and their varying agendas, including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other extremist groups. It depicts a picture of a country whose civil war caused one of the biggest crises in the 21st century.
It contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 200 cross-referenced entries on the major events, places, and actors in the Syrian war. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Syrian uprising.

This book offers a multidisciplinary look at the much-debated concept of "personalized medicine". By combining a humanistic and a scientific approach, the book builds up a multidimensional way to understand the limits and potentialities of a personalized approach in medicine and healthcare. The book reflects on personalized medicine and complex diseases, the relationship between personalized medicine and the new bio-technologies, personalized medicine and personalized nutrition, and on some ethical, political, economic, and social implications of personalized medicine. This volume is of interest to researchers from several disciplines including philosophy, bio-medicine, and the social sciences.

Chapter 16, "The Impact of Fantasy" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

While it has been argued that anonymity in gamete donation has been brought to an end by legal changes and technological developments, Amelie Baumann suggests that this is in fact still in transformation. By focusing on the narratives of those who were conceived with anonymously donated gametes in the UK and Germany, she examines this transformative process and the role which donor-conceived persons play in it. This book shows that it is not someone's decision to procreate that turns >>being donor-conceived<< into a meaningful categorisation. Rather, kinship knowledge gets activated by the donor-conceived in specific ways for >>being donor-conceived<< to become a powerful identification.

This book provides an account of the experience of a multifaceted system-change programme to strengthen the capacity of Ireland's statutory child protection and welfare agency in the areas of prevention, early intervention and family support.

Many jurisdictions globally are involved in system change processes focused on increasing investment in services that seek to prevent children's entry into child protection and welfare systems, through early intervention, greater support to families, and an increased emphasis on rights and participation. Based on a four-year in-depth study by a team of University-based researchers, this text adds to the emerging knowledge-base on developing, implementing and evaluating system change in child protection and welfare. Study methodological approaches were wide ranging and involved a number of key stakeholders including children, parents, social workers and social care workers, service managers, agency leaders and policy makers. Since the change process involved an agency-university partnership encompassing design, technical support and evaluation, the book also contributes to understandings of the potential and limits of such partnerships in the child protection and welfare field. Uniquely, the book gives voice to the experience of both agency personnel and academic in the accounts provided.

It will be of interest to all scholars, students and practitioners in the areas of child protection and welfare.