Health Promotion and Disease Prevention in Clinical Practice » (2nd Edition)

Woolf, Steven H., MD, PhD (Medical Coll of Virginia); Jonas, Steven, MD, MPH (SUNY at Stony Brook); Lawrence, Robert S., MD (Johns Hopkins Univ)

The contributors represent the specialties of family medicine, preventive medicine, emergency medicine, pediatrics, and epidemiology. Most are from academic medical centers and government agencies in the U.S. Institutions prominently represented include Harvard, Univ of Washington, Univ of Colorado, CDC, Office of the Surgeon General, and NCI.

Incorporating the latest guidelines from major organizations, including the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, this book offers clinicians a complete overview of how to help patients adopt healthy behaviors and to deliver recommended screening tests and immunizations. Chapters provide practical guidance on counseling patients about exercise, nutrition, tobacco use, substance use, sexually transmitted infections, and depression and on gathering information from the patient, ordering evidence-based screening tests, designing a personalized health maintenance plan, facilitating behavior change, and the work-up of abnormal results from screening tests. This new edition includes updated chapters on practice redesign, the use of electronic medical records, and reimbursement; updated patient resource materials and instructions; and new authors with deep expertise on the topics. A companion Website (www.healthpromodisprev.com) features fully searchable text online.

Alex Lickerman

This book summarizes the various preventative care guidelines currently recommended by the major American and Canadian Task Forces. The book provides practical information for the purpose of promoting the implementation of services designed to prevent disease from occurring and to detect asymptomatic disease early enough to improve morbidity and morality. It is appropriately targeted to healthcare professionals involved in providing primary care, including physicians, physician assistants, nurses, and nurse practitioners. The writing is clear and easily grasped by this audience. The book outlines the data concisely, includes discussions of strength of evidence, and organizes its presentation into subheadings whicthat are practical and greatly aid in application to clinical practice, such as What to Do with Abnormal Results, Potential Adverse Effects of Screening, and Accuracy and Reliability as Screening Test. In collecting and reviewing results from more than 200 studies examining preventative care practices, the authors have done a great service for primary caregivers. Not only have they laid out a large amount of often-conflicting data in an easily digestible form, they have specifically calculated sensitivities, specificities, and positive predictive values for individual screening tests, exam practices, and procedures either to support or refute recommendations to screen or not to screen. These statistics are extremely important to have available when discussing preventative care with patients, and the authors have been diligent in their accuracy. In addition, they complement these statistics with pragmatic suggestions for improving patient compliance with beneficial lifestylepractices. The quality of the book is superior, its message in great need of broadcasting, and it should help many practitioners improve the quality of care they deliver to their patients.