The Social Ecology of Infectious Diseases

Social Ecology of Infectious Diseases explores how human activities enable microbes to disseminate and evolve, thereby creating favorable conditions for the diverse manifestations of communicable diseases. Today, infectious and parasitic diseases cause about one-third of deaths and are the second leading cause of morbidity and mortality. The speed that changes in human behavior can produce epidemics is well illustrated by AIDS, but this is only one of numerous microbial threats whose severity and spread are determined by human behaviors. In this book, forty experts in the fields of infectious diseases, the life sciences and public health explore how demography, geography, migration, travel, environmental change, natural disaster, sexual behavior, drug use, food production and distribution, medical technology, training and preparedness, as well as governance, human conflict and social dislocation influence current and likely future epidemics.

• Provides essential understanding of current and future epidemics
• Presents a crossover perspective for disciplines in the medical and social sciences and public policy, including public health, infectious diseases, population science, epidemiology, microbiology, food safety, defense preparedness and humanitarian relief
• Creates a new perspective on ecology based on the interaction of microbes and human activities

Public Health faculty & students; Physicians and educators in infectious diseases, pediatrics, internal medicine, emergency medicine and first responders, genitourinary medicine (STDs)

Travel Changing Sexual Mores and Disease Transmission The International Drug Epidemic Urbanization and the Social Ecology of Emerging Infectious Diseases Suburbanization In Developed Nations The Social Ecology of Infectious Disease Transmission in Day Care Centers Protecting Blood Safety Food Safety in the Industrialized World Antibiotic Resistance and Nosocomial Infections Vaccines and Immunization Infectious Diseases in the Context of War, Civil Strife and Social Dislocation Bioterrorism Infectious Diseases Associated with Natural Disasters (working title) Climate Change And Infectious Diseases Governance, Human Rights and Infectious Disease: Theoretical, Empirical and Practical Perspectives International Organizational Response to Infectious Disease Epidemics Principles of Building the Global Health Workforce