New Books In Public Health

Xaq Frohlich’s From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age (U California Press, 2023) is a biography of the Nutrition Facts label that adorns millions of food products and has become an integral part of the food and information landscape in the United States. Frohlich’s story unfolds in part as an institutional history of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency responsible for the label, using the agency as a way to understand the ideological and policy debates about responsibility for communicating scientific information to the public, from regulation and gatekeeping to information brokering and nudging. From Label to Table is the story of how the contemporary American food information environment emerged out of this history of transformation from paternalism to “informationism.”Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Humanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice (Routledge, 2023) brings together a global community of mental health professionals to offer an impassioned defense of relationship-based depth psychotherapy. Expressing ideas that are integral to the mission of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN), the authors demonstrate a shared vision of a world where this therapy is accessible to all communities. They also articulate the difficulties created by the current mental health diagnostic system and differing conceptualizations of mental distress, the shortsightedness of evidence-based care and research, and the depreciation of depth therapy by many stakeholders. The authors thoughtfully elucidate the crucial importance of therapies of depth, insight, and relationship in the repertoire of mental health treatment and speak to the implications of PsiAN’s mission both now and in the future.With a distinguished international group of authors and a clear focus on determining a future direction for psychotherapy, this book is essential reading for all psychotherapists.With a distinguished international group of authors and a clear focus on determining a future direction for psychotherapy, this book is essential reading for all psychotherapists.Linda Michaels is not only an editor of this book, but the chair and co-founder of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN), consulting editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry, clinical associate faculty of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, and fellow of the Lauder Institute Global MBA program. Linda is a psychologist with a private practice in Chicago.Judith Tanen is an LP candidate at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In an age of pandemics the relationship between the health of the city and good sanitation has never been more important. Colin McFarlane, through Waste and the City: The Crisis of Sanitation and the Right to Citylife (Verso, 2023), makes a call to action on one of modern urban life's most neglected issues: sanitation infrastructure. The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the devastating consequences of unequal access to sanitation in cities across the globe. At this critical moment in global public health, Colin McFarlane makes the urgent case for Sanitation for All.The book outlines the worldwide sanitation crisis and offers a vision for a renewed, equitable investment in sanitation that democratises and socialises the modern city. Adopting Henri Lefebvre's concept of 'the right to the city', it uses the notion of 'citylife' to reframe the discourse on sanitation from a narrowly-defined policy discussion to a question of democratic right to public life and health. In doing so, the book shows that sanitation is an urbanizing force whose importance extends beyond hygiene to the very foundation of urban social life.Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is about the construction of identity and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at nightlife and the emotional labor that is performed by bouncers at bars and nightclubs. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Should your doctor prescribe a placebo for you, instead of conventional medicine? And if she did, would it work? Is the double-blind placebo-controlled paradigm really the gold standard for medical research?Placebos are the most widely used treatments in the history of medicine. Thousands of studies show that they can be effective and make us happier and healthier. Yet confusion about what placebos are and how to measure their effects prevents some doctors from using them to help patients. Meanwhile, damage caused by the nocebo effect—the negative effect of expecting something bad—is not widely recognized.In The Power of Placebos: Unlocking Their Potential to Improve Health Care (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), Jeremy Howick provides an interdisciplinary perspective on placebos and nocebos based on more than twenty years of research and data from over 300,000 patients. This book, the culmination of that research, offers practical ways for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to put placebo and nocebo research into practice to improve health outcomes.In addition to providing an overview of placebos and nocebos and explaining how belief systems and context can create physiological effects in the body, Howick advocates for a number of controversial positions, including why it may be unethical to include placebos in most clinical trials in which there are already established therapies and why physicians should consider using placebos regularly in their practices. Howick also underscores the importance of the therapeutic effects of interactions between health care practitioners and patients, in the context of care. The Power of Placebos dispels the confusion surrounding placebos and paves the way for doctors to help patients by enhancing placebo effects and avoiding the pitfalls of nocebos.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il. She's on Twitter @embracingwisdom. She blogs here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Even before the Covid pandemic began in 2020, chronic loneliness was a private experience of profound anguish that had become a public health crisis. Since then it has reached new heights. Loneliness assumes many forms, from enduring physical isolation to feeling rejected because of difference, and it can have devastating consequences for our physical and mental health. Jeremy Nobel founded Project UnLonely to bring creativity as well as social and medical strategies to address this societal problem. In his book Project UnLonely: Healing our Crisis of Disconnection (Avery, 2023), Dr. Nobel unpacks our personal and national experiences of loneliness to discover its roots and to show how we can take steps to find comfort and connection. Dr. Nobel brings together many voices, from pioneering researchers, to leaders in business, education, the arts, and healthcare, to lonely people of every age, background, and circumstance. He discovers that the pandemic isolated us in ways that were not only physical, and that, at its core, a true sense of loneliness results from a disconnection to the self. He clarifies how meaningful reconnection can be nourished and sustained. And he reveals that an important component of the healing process is engaging in creativity, a powerful opportunity he shows us can be accessed by all.Ron Winslow, a former long-time medical and science reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, is a freelance medical and science journalist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can you run a marathon, drink coffee, eat fish, or fly on a plane while pregnant? Such questions are just the tip of the iceberg for how most pregnant women's bodies are managed, surveilled, and scrutinized during pregnancy. The Reproduction of Inequality: How Class Shapes the Pregnant Body and Infant Health (NYU Press, 2023) examines the intense social pressure that expectant and new mothers face when it comes to their health and body-care choices.Drawing on interviews with dozens of pregnant women and new mothers from poor, middle-class, and mixed-class backgrounds, Katherine Mason paints a vivid picture of the immense weight of expectation that comes with the early stages of motherhood. The women in Mason's study universally sought to give their children a healthy start in life; however, their chosen approaches varied based on their socio-economic class. Whereas middle-class mothers attempted a complete lifestyle change and absolute devotion to the achievement and maintenance of "the healthy pregnant body," poorer women made strategic choices about which health goals to prioritize on a limited budget, lacking the economic and cultural capital required to speak and perfectly adhere to the language of "good health." The unfortunate result is that middle-class mothers are more likely to be seen by others and by themselves as "good" parents, whereas the efforts of working-class mothers are often misread as displaying inadequate concern about their health and that of their child. This in turn contributes to longstanding stereotypes about poor families and communities, and limits their children's chances for upward mobility. The Reproduction of Inequality is a compelling analysis of the impact of class on new mothers' approaches to health and wellness, and a sobering examination of how inequality shapes mothers' efforts to maximize their own health and that of their children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford University Professor of Medicine) joins to the podcast to discuss his beginnings being born in Calcutta, India, his journey to Stanford as a student obtaining four degrees at the institution (BA, MD, MA, PhD) to becoming a Stanford professor along with his research, the COVID-19 pandemic, and his views on the inadequacies of the public health community and its handling of the pandemic policy response. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: Insights for a Post-pandemic World (Ubiquity Press, 2021) brings together an ensemble of social scientists who offer critical reflections on how the pandemic was experienced in the region.It interrogates dominants narratives of Covid-19’s legacies and invites readers to reflect of what it means to return to ‘normal’ in contexts marked by inequalities, selective policy interventions, and invisibilised experiences of marginalised communities.The book is structured around three themes: (1) urbanisation, digital infrastructures, economies, and the environment; (2) migrants, (im)mobilities, and borders; and (3) collective action, communities, and mutual action. Each chapter offers a distinctive point of view that contribute to a wider project of decolonising knowledge production.Hyun Bang Shin is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and directs the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre.Murray Mckenzie is a postdoctoral research assistant and research officer at the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and a strategic planning consultant.Do Young Oh is an assistant professor at the Department of Urban Planning and Engineering, Pusan National University. Interested readers can have the open access version of the book using this link.Like this interview? You may also be interested in: Christian M. Anderson, Urbanism without Guarantees: The Everyday Life of a Gentrifying West Side Neighborhood, (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) Jacob Lederman, Chasing World-Class Urbanism: Global Policy Versus Everyday Survival in Buenos Aires, (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) Nicole Curato is a Professor of Sociology in the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. She co-hosts the New Books in Southeast Asia Studies channel.This episode was created in collaboration with Erron C. Medina of the Development Studies Program of Ateneo De Manila University and Nicole Anne Revita. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program evolve from a Depression-era effort to use up surplus goods into America's foundational food assistance program? And how does SNAP survive? Incisive and original, Why SNAP Works: A Political History--And Defense--of the Food Stamp Program (U California Press, 2023) is the first book to provide a comprehensive history and evaluation of the nation's most important food insecurity and poverty alleviation effort. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly food stamps, is the nation's largest government effort for helping low-income Americans obtain an adequate diet. Everyone has an opinion about SNAP, not all of them positive, but its benefits are felt broadly and across party lines. Christopher Bosso makes a clear, nuanced, and impassioned case for protecting this unique food voucher program, exploring its history and breaking down the facts for readers across the political spectrum. Why SNAP Works is an essential resource for anyone concerned about food access, poverty, and the "welfare system" in the United States.Stephen Pimpare is a Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What makes fad diets so appealing to so many people? And how did these fads become so central to conversations about food and nutrition?Anxious Eaters: Why We Fall for Fad Diets (Columbia University Press, 2022) shows that fad diets are popular because they fulfill crucial social and psychological needs―which is also why they tend to fail. Authors Janet Chrzan and Kima Cargill bring together anthropology, psychology, and nutrition to explore what these programs promise yet rarely fulfill for dieters. They demonstrate how fad diets help people cope with widespread anxieties and offer tantalizing glimpses of attainable self-transformation. Chrzan and Cargill emphasize the social contexts of diets, arguing that beliefs about nutrition are deeply rooted in pervasive cultural narratives.Considering dietary beliefs and practices in terms of culture, nutrition, and individual psychological needs, Anxious Eaters refrains from moralizing or promoting a “right” way to eat. Instead, it offers new ways of understanding the popularity of a wide range of eating trends, including the Atkins Diet and other low- or no-carb diets; beliefs that ingredients like wheat products and sugars are toxic, allergenic, or addictive; food avoidance and “Clean Eating” practices; and paleo or primal diets. Anxious Eaters sheds new light on why people adopt such diets and why these diets remain so attractive even though they often fail.Janet Chrzan teaches nutritional anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Alcohol: Social Drinking in Cultural Context (2013) as well as coeditor of Research Methods for the Anthropological Study of Food and Nutrition (2017) and Organic Food, Farming, and Culture (2019).Garrett Broad is Associate Professor of Communication Studies in Rowan University’s Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts, where he also serves as Provost’s Fellow in the Catalysts for Sustainability Initiative. His research and teaching explores the connections between contemporary social movements, food systems, and digital media technology. He is the author of More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change, as well as a variety of articles on food's relationship to environmental sustainability, economic equity, and the health of humans and nonhuman animals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices