The Psychologist's Book of Personality Tests

Critical Issues in Global Health. Edited by C. EVERETT KOOP, CLARENCE E. PEARSON, M. ROY SCHWARZ. Jossey-Bass, A. Wiley Company, San Francisco, 2001, 472 pages, $58.00, Hardback. ISBN 0-7879-4824-1. SINCE SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, global issues, especially those related to health, have become more than just academic subjects. While we, as a society, discuss health issues never before seen as newsworthy (e.g., the availability of antibiotics, the spread of illnesses through such unconventional mechanisms as the mail, the potential return of previously defeated bacteria, and the possibility of epidemics), there is a rush for reliable information that will help answer the related questions. This book supplies reliable information and thoughtful insights into many of these issues. My interest in international health began when my family and I served in the Peace Corps in West Africa. The interest has continued through my college teaching in Israel for the past four years. This year, as I prepared my health services management course for spring, 2002, in Israel, I became committed to expanding the global dimensions of the course and looked to this book for assistance. Spending another semester in Israel as well as visiting with long-distance students in Cairo, Egypt during this past spring has made me acutely aware of global issues. I provide this background not because it addresses the content of the book, but because it frames the issue that global health affects students and faculty (and their families) in our institutions. The International Congress on Allied Health this year also indicated that global health for both practitioners and faculty is an important issue. Critical Issues in Global Health is an edited collection of 51 chapters addressing the World, the Organization, and Partnerships in global health issues. The authors, numbering over 70, represent a Who's Who of global health. For example, the first chapter is by Gro Harlem Brundtland, DirectorGeneral of the World Health Organization, and the last one is by Gary L. Filerman, Senior Advisor at the Academy of Educational Development, and Clarence E. Pearson, the Founding President and CEO of the National Center for Health Education. The book brings together writers and researchers from a wide variety of backgrounds, locations, and interests, working toward a common goal: a thorough, definitive overview of global health issues, both now and in the future. Like any book of this scope and dimension in an edited collection, there is bound to be some repetition and redundancy. The editors have done admirable work in asking each writer to focus on a limited number of issues to provide some unity and continuity to the book. …