John G. Bruhn

This volume conceptualizes caregiving as an emerging sociological issue involving complex and fluctuating roles. The authors contend that caregiving must be considered in the context of the life span with needs that vary according to age, developmental levels, mental health needs and physical health demands of both caregivers and care recipients. As the nature and functions of caregiving evolve it has become a critical and salient issue in the lives of individuals in all demographic, socioeconomic and ethnic categories. This volume frames caregiving as a sociological issue and addresses a number of central concerns, such as: - Caregiving is a life span experience associated with aging and the roles of spouses and adult children. - Caregiving involves a complex of social system variables that influence the social support and services to caregivers and care recipients. - The nature of the relationship among family caregivers, professional caregivers and the care recipient are embedded in their interaction and dynamics influenced by the internal and external variables that inhibit or facilitate the care situation. - How can caregiving be integrated with a public health agenda?- What disparities or inequalities exist in caregiving and what are the barriers that sustain them? - What community-based interventions need to be developed to improve caregiving?

This brief provides approaches to help family caregivers understand the role of caregiving, its challenges and consequences. Using real life case examples, it illustrates the essentials of family caregiving. The caregiving role can be a source of caregiver stress and can become increasingly burdensome. People are now living longer and acquiring chronic diseases, which makes it necessary to involve caregivers to assist in disability care for longer periods of time, and live out their end-time at home, which means caregivers are more and more needed, especially at the end-of-life. This brief illustrates the role and scope of caregiving and its future growth. It is useful to physicians, social workers, sociologists, psychologists, nurses, public health, public policy and families and has a broad appeal for use in courses on Death and Dying.

Many of our current social problems have been attributed to the breakdown or loss of community as a place and to the fragmentation of connections due to an extreme value of individualism in the Western world, particularly in the United States. Not all scholars and researchers agree that individualism and technology are the primary culprits in the loss of community as it existed in the middle decade of the 20th century. Nonetheless, people exist in groups, and connections are vital to their existence and in the daily performance of activities. The second edition of the Sociology of Community Connections will identify and help students understand community connectedness in the present and future.

This volume conceptualizes caregiving as an emerging sociological issue involving complex and fluctuating roles. The authors contend that caregiving must be considered in the context of the life span with needs that vary according to age, developmental levels, mental health needs and physical health demands of both caregivers and care recipients. As the nature and functions of caregiving evolve it has become a critical and salient issue in the lives of individuals in all demographic, socioeconomic and ethnic categories. This volume frames caregiving as a sociological issue and addresses a number of central concerns, such as: - Caregiving is a life span experience associated with aging and the roles of spouses and adult children. - Caregiving involves a complex of social system variables that influence the social support and services to caregivers and care recipients. - The nature of the relationship among family caregivers, professional caregivers and the care recipient are embedded in their interaction and dynamics influenced by the internal and external variables that inhibit or facilitate the care situation. - How can caregiving be integrated with a public health agenda?- What disparities or inequalities exist in caregiving and what are the barriers that sustain them? - What community-based interventions need to be developed to improve caregiving?

The sister cities of the southwestern United States border are challenged by widespread environmental and health issues and limited access to help. And while different initiatives have been set up to improve health outcomes and lessen inequities in the border region, evaluation data are scarce. Culture and Health Disparities provides a perspective on U. S.-Mexico border health with an evidence-based guide for conceptualizing, implementing, and evaluating health interventions. Taking into account the unique qualities of border life and their influence on general wellbeing, this important volume offers detailed criteria for creating public health programs that are medically, culturally, and ethically sound. The book identifies gaps in intervention research on major health concerns in the area, relating them to disparity-reduction efforts in the rest of the U. S. and arguing for more relevant means of data gathering and analysis. The author also asserts that progress can be made on both sides of the border despite concurrent social and political problems in the region. Included in the coverage:The border region as a social system. The development of health disparities: a life-course model. A social systems approach to understanding health disparities. A critique of U. S.-Mexico border health interventions. Evaluating interventions to reduce healthcare disparities. Ethical issues in health interventions across cultures and contexts. A text for researchers and practitioners working to promote border health and reduce service inequalities, Culture and Health Disparities asks pertinent questions and provides workable, meaningful answers.

Leaders are usually held responsible for the trust, health and success of an organization, but it is the culture of organizations that provides the true foundation for these important factors. The leader's personality and skills influence how a trustful environment and working relationship is created, but the organization has a culture, tradition and experience of its own which influences the leader's success. The level of trust in an organization's culture will ultimately determine whether or not it is trustful, healthy and successful. Based on the interview of current and former chief executive officers from profit and non profit organizations to record their experiences in creating trust in their environment and their perceptions of the health of their organizations. The collected data reveals: - The qualities of a "trusted" leader; - How they created trust or; - How trust was destroyed in organizations; - How leaders worked in distrustful environments; - How to create a more healthy organization. This timely work will be of interest to organizations and occupational sociologists, human resource workers, social psychologists, and students of management courses.

Many of our current social problems have been attributed to the breakdown or loss of community as a place and to the fragmentation of connections due to an extreme value of individualism in the Western world, particularly in the United States. Not all scholars and researchers agree that individualism and technology are the primary culprits in the loss of community as it existed in the middle decade of the 20th century. Nonetheless, people exist in groups, and connections are vital to their existence and in the daily performance of activities. The second edition of the Sociology of Community Connections will identify and help students understand community connectedness in the present and future.

Slightly more than a decade ago, our text, Clinical Sociology: An Agenda For Action, was published by Plenum Academic Publishers. Since that time (1996), the Clinical Sociology Association has changed its name to the Sociological Pr- tice Association and has merged with the Society for Applied Sociology. This new organization and its joint journal became effective in 2005. Therefore, as we began planning a second edition to our text, we decided it would be only app- priate to change its original title to Sociological Practice: Intervention and Social Change. Intervention to bring about beneficial social change is the theme of this new edition of our text. We have attempted to write a “how to do it” type of book for students who are interested in careers in sociological practice. We emphasize the importance of establishing a theoretical foundation for planning an intervention for each client, followed by an extensive assessment, fact-finding, and dialogue with the client in selecting an appropriate intervention(s), establishing an ethical practitioner-client relationship, and a timetable of expectations and financial costs detailed in a written contract. Every intervention also involves an evaluation in order to determine its effectiveness and feedback for improvement with future clients. We emphasize how critical it is for practitioners to be ethical in all of their interactions as these impact referrals and the reputations of both the practitioner and the profession.

Community is a key concept in sociology. In the last decade, especially with the explosion of electronic communication, the definition of community has changed. There is now a need to define the concept of community and tie it to the various levels of human interaction, from the global to the individual. Currently there are many books that address many aspects of community, but there is a lack of text which "connects" the concept of community with the range of issues from the macro level to the micro level. This book will discuss the rationale for community, the varieties of communities, the effect of social change on communities and many other factors of connectedness as the costs for losing it.

Roseto is a small Italian-American community in east-central Pennsylvania. This fifteen-year study drawing on medical histories, physical examinations, and laboratory tests, compared a large sample of Rosetans to inhabitants of two neighboring communities, Bangor and Nazareth, and followed up this research with a sociological study of the three communities. Despite a greater prevalence of obesity in Roseto, and despite similar dietary, smoking, and exercise habits and similar ethnic and genetic background, the inhabitants of Roseto were relatively immune to heart disease at the beginning of the research in 1963. They were also strikingly tenacious in adhering to Old World values and customs. When these traditional values and relationship were abandoned by the rising generation, the death rate from heart disease climbed toward the American norm. The study concluded that unconditional interpersonal support counteracts life stress and thus preserves life.

The availability and delivery of health care is one of the most important issues on the contemporary American public policy agenda. The authors analyze the social, psychological, and bureaucratic boundaries that define health care in the United States, discuss how organizational change affects these boundaries, and suggest broad strategies for managing them. A new introduction by the authors contributes to the currency of this book, which was originally published by Charles C. Thomas in 1993. From the Introduction to the Percheron Press Edition . . . 'This book helps the reader understand the social and psychological aspects of territoriality and turfism and gives a range of examples and vignettes to illustrate the dynamics of boundaries among health professionals, and between health professionals and others with whom they interact both inside and outside the health care conglomerate.'

Leaders are usually held responsible for the trust, health and success of an organization, but it is the culture of organizations that provides the true foundation for these important factors. The leader's personality and skills influence how a trustful environment and working relationship is created, but the organization has a culture, tradition and experience of its own which influences the leader's success. The level of trust in an organization's culture will ultimately determine whether or not it is trustful, healthy and successful. Based on the interview of current and former chief executive officers from profit and non profit organizations to record their experiences in creating trust in their environment and their perceptions of the health of their organizations. The collected data reveals: - The qualities of a "trusted" leader; - How they created trust or; - How trust was destroyed in organizations; - How leaders worked in distrustful environments; - How to create a more healthy organization. This timely work will be of interest to organizations and occupational sociologists, human resource workers, social psychologists, and students of management courses.