Public Health and Aging: Maximizing Function and Well-Being

The new edition has the balance of breadth and depth and should appeal to practitioners, academics and students alike. The second edition of Public Health and Aging is a must-read book in the developing field of public health and aging.

--American Public Health Association

[This] book provides an understanding of the physical, mental, and social functioning domains that affect older persons and how these affect quality of life. This is a valuable addition to the growing field of public health and aging.

--Doody's

The health care industry has continued its efforts to promote health and prevent disease among elderly populations. In this book, however, the authors argue that simple health promotion and disease prevention are not enough to address the many challenges of aging-whether it entails being physically frail, living with dementia, or approaching death. Instead, the unique focus of this groundbreaking text centers on maximizing function and well-being for the elderly.

This book promotes the development and maintenance of optimal physical, mental, and social functioning, irrespective of acquired disease and with due recognition of the senescent changes that accompany late life. Updated, revised, and significantly expanded, this second edition contains new chapters that examine chronic disease, long-term care, and ethical issues in public health and aging. The book also serves as an excellent textbook for both graduate and undergraduate curriculums.

Key Features:

• Provides updated statistics and trends related to physical, cognitive, and affective functioning for older adults
• Covers key topics such as physical functioning and disability, cognitive disability, affective and social functioning, quality of life, and mortality
• Discusses the national efforts to make communities more elder-friendly
• Includes important information on evidence-based depression management programs
• Covers the core fields of public health: epidemiology, population studies, health systems and policy, and health behaviors
• Instructor's Guide available to qualified instructors (contact [email protected])

This book serves as an invaluable resource to both health professionals and students, delineating what measures health care professionals can take to help elderly populations not only maintain but optimize their health. "

"[This] book provides an understanding of the physical, mental, and social functioning domains that affect older persons and how these affect quality of life. This is a valuable addition to the growing field of public health and aging."

--Doody's

The health care industry has continued its efforts to promote health and prevent disease among elderly populations. In this book, however, the authors argue that simple health promotion and disease prevention are not enough to address the many challenges of aging-whether it entails being physically frail, living with dementia, or approaching death. Instead, the unique focus of this groundbreaking text centers on maximizing function and well-being for the elderly.

This book promotes the development and maintenance of optimal physical, mental, and social functioning, irrespective of acquired disease and with due recognition of the senescent changes that accompany late life. Updated, revised, and significantly expanded, this second edition contains new chapters that examine chronic disease, long-term care, and ethical issues in public health and aging. The book also serves as an excellent textbook for both graduate and undergraduate curriculums.

Key Features:

• Provides updated statistics and trends related to physical, cognitive, and affective functioning for older adults
  
• Covers key topics such as physical functioning and disability, cognitive disability, affective and social functioning, quality of life, and mortality
  
• Discusses the national efforts to make communities more "elder-friendly"
  
• Includes important information on evidence-based depression management programs
  
• Covers the core fields of public health: epidemiology, population studies, health systems and policy, and health behaviors
  
• Instructor's Guide available to qualified instructors (contact [email protected])
  

This book serves as an invaluable resource to both health professionals and students, delineating what measures health care professionals can take to help elderly populations not only maintain but optimize their health.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Sylvia E. Furner, MPH, PhD(University of Illinois at Chicago)
Description:In response to feedback on the first edition of 2004, the authors have expanded their discussion of the delivery of public health efforts to the older population in this edition. They also provide new information on such important areas as aging services networks, long-term care, and ethical issues in public health and aging. Most importantly, they provide an integrated framework for helping maximize functioning in later life.
Purpose:The purpose is to provide a broad approach to addressing the challenge of aging for both the individual and society. As the authors state, "public health and aging must address a much more heterogeneous aging experience." The book is intended to do just that. It adds important information and perspectives to this field.
Audience:This is designed as the main textbook for an undergraduate or graduate class in aging and public health and as a possible supplementary book for gerontology and geriatric medicine. In my view, undergraduate students should be in upper level classes to get the most out of this book.
Features:The book provides an understanding of the physical, mental, and social functioning domains that affect older persons and how these affect quality of life. Further, it discusses how long-term care, end-of-life care, and ethical concerns impact the aging population and public health policies and delivery systems. The chapters on chronic disease, disability and functioning, and dementia are particularly strong, and the chapter on ethical issues in public health and aging is a very worthwhile addition.
Assessment:This is a valuable addition to the growing field of public health and aging. Although the first edition was published not that long ago, this new edition substantially expands upon it, both in terms of additional topics and in expansion of previously covered topics. This will be quite useful as a textbook in this field.

Steven M. Albert, PhD, MSPH is Professor of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences at the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. He is trained in anthropology (PhD, University of Chicago) and epidemiology (MS, Columbia University) and completed postdoctoral fellowships in aging and health policy (Rutgers University) and aging and cognition (Columbia University). Dr. Albert has 20 years of research in aging and public health, with completed projects investigating disability transitions in old age (National Institute of Aging), mental health at the end of life (National institute of Mental Health), cross-cultural variation in health and chronic disease (Fetzer Institute, Alzheimer's Association, CDC), home health care (Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation), family caregiving (National Alliance of Caregiving), and medication adherence (United Hospital Fund). He conducted fieldwork in Papua New Guinea as a Fulbright Scholar. Current projects include studies of medication review in senior housing (Pittsburgh Foundation), dynamic computational modeling of health behavior (University of Pittsburgh), worksite health promotion for chronic disease management (PPG, Inc.), and assessment of home care technologies. He co-founded the Aging and Public Health MPH Program at Columbia University and teaches courses in aging and public health and research methods in aging research. Dr. Albert is the author or editor of 3 books and over 100 peer-reviewed articles. He has served as an officer in the Behavioral and Social Sciences section of the Gerontological Society of America and the Gerontological Health Section of the American Public Health Association.

Vicki A. Freedman, MA, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Health Systems and Policy, at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey's School of Public Health and holds a Faculty Associate appointment at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Dr. Freedman has published extensively on topics related to population aging, disability, and long-term care. Her recent research focuses on the causes and consequences of late-life disability trends; measuring disability, time use, and well-being among older couples; evaluating the population-level effects of interventions to maximize functioning, and neighborhoods and late-life health and functioning.. She has served on over a dozen national advisory panels for federal agencies, including the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Disability in America, and is Co-Principal Investigator of the National Health and Aging Trends Study. She earned her doctorate in Epidemiology from Yale University and master's in Demography from Georgetown University.