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The community action model is a 5-step, community driven model designed to build communities' capacity to address health disparities through mobilization. Fundamental to the model is a critical analysis identifying the underlying social, economic, and environmental forces that create health and social inequities in a community. The goal is to provide communities with the framework necessary to acquire the skills and resources to plan, implement, and evaluate health-related actions and policies. The model was developed in the context of tobacco-related health disparities. Concrete policy outcomes demonstrate the model's potential application to a wide variety of grassroots policy development efforts.

A century ago, the US Supreme Court in Jacobson v Massachusetts upheld the exercise of the police power to protect the public's health. Despite intervening scientific and legal advances, public health practitioners still struggle with Jacobson's basic tension between individual liberty and the common good. In affirming Massachusetts' compulsory vaccination law, the Court established a floor of constitutional protections that consists of 4 standards: necessity, reasonable means, proportionality, and harm avoidance. Under Jacobsen, the courts are to support public health matters insofar as these standards are respected. If the Court today were to decide Jacobson once again, the analysis would likely differ to account for developments in constitutional law--but the outcome would certainly reaffirm the basic power of government to safeguard the public's health.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. schools employ over 2.5 million teachers and over 2 million other employees including school administrators, instructional support staff, and others.[1] As [...]

INTRODUCTION Telemedicine has been rapidly increasing in the United States over the last decade, with many different types of applications for health care providers and patients. Rapid growth in the [...], Access to health care continues to be one of the major challenges to individuals, communities, and policy makers. In rural areas, the challenges are especially acute. This article examines the use of digital technology to provide health care services to underserved communities. An experimental telepsychiatry program is used to illustrate the promise and the obstacles to using technology to link communities to advanced health care services.

This article begins by discussing the recent emergence in the United States of women's health as a major public policy issue. The central question posed in the article is, How can the public's and government's interest in women's health be used to maximize health benefits for all women? Two arenas of women's health, childbearing and heart disease, are explored to further our understand of the possible costs and benefits to women of being a priority within the national public policy agenda. Three factors are proposed as crucial for maximizing women's health benefits within the current health policy climate: (a) broadening the definition of health benefits, (b) involving more women in the process of determining the hierarchy of health needs, and (c) involving more women in both the research and clinical aspects of medicine.

Health care reform policy is aimed at providing universal access to health care services. This policy assumes that subsidies, either through insurance reform or direct economic assistance, will be equitably distributed among Americans. However, the policy does not make clear how the subsidies will be financed. Even the idea of universal access, as introduced in the health care reform program, is vague. Considering the scarce health care resources, universal access may not be possible.

Family planning is not only a social and political issue, but also a health issue. Americans have a mixed attitude toward sexuality, which limits the funding and availability of family planning services, including sex education, prenatal care, birth control and abortion. Many health insurance companies do not pay for contraceptives, whether oral or implanted. Abortion is a politically hot topic, which may not be covered by health care reform plans. Many women may have to pay for family planning themselves, especially if they prefer to receive such services through local family planning clinics rather than obstetricians. Yet, most studies show that in states with higher expenditures for family planning, including education, birth control and abortion, pregnant women are more likely to get prenatal care, there are fewer low-birth-weight and premature infants, and mothers and infants are healthier. Perhaps wanted children are better cared for.

In 1991 Bolivia, one of the countries selected for the WHO Initiative for Intensified Cooperation with Countries, decided to include the health district of Tupiza, with a population of 125 [...]