Explore the vast range of titles available.

During the past forty years, thousands of studies have been carried out on the subject of happiness. Some have explored the levels of happiness or dissatisfaction associated with typical daily activities, such as working, seeing friends, or doing household chores. Others have tried to determine the extent to which income, family, religion, and other factors are associated with the satisfaction people feel about their lives. The Gallup organization has begun conducting global surveys of happiness, and several countries are considering publishing periodic reports on the growth or decline of happiness among their people. One nation, tiny Bhutan, has actually made \"Gross National Happiness\" the central aim of its domestic policy. How might happiness research affect government policy in the United States--and beyond? In The Politics of Happiness, former Harvard president Derek Bok examines how governments could use the rapidly growing research data on what makes people happy--in a variety of policy areas to increase well-being and improve the quality of life for all their citizens.

In the realm of health care, privacy protections are needed to preserve patients' dignity and prevent possible harms. Ten years ago, to address these concerns as well as set guidelines for ethical health research, Congress called for a set of federal standards now known as the HIPAA Privacy Rule. In its 2009 report, Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule: Enhancing Privacy, Improving Health Through Research, the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Health Research and the Privacy of Health Information concludes that the HIPAA Privacy Rule does not protect privacy as well as it should, and that it impedes important health research.

The earliest sickness survey of the US Public Health Service, which started in 1915, was the Service’s first socioeconomic study of an industrial community. It was also the first to define illness as a person’s inability to work. The survey incorporated the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s definition of illness, which, instead of sickness rates, focused on duration of illness as a proxy of time lost from work. This kind of survey took place in the broader context of the reform movements of the Progressive Era and the social surveys conducted in the United States, which led to the creation of the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, where the Service’s sickness survey originated. The Service’s focus on the socioeconomic classification of families and definition of illness as the inability to work enabled it to show the strong link between poverty and illness among industrial workers. The leader of the survey, Edgar Sydenstricker, and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company came up with new ways to measure the health of the population, which also influenced the Service’s studies of the effects of the Great Depression on public health and the National Health Survey of 1935–1936. (Am J Public Health. 2021; 111(11):1960–1968. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306454 )

On November 29, 1781, Captain Collingwood of the British shipZongcommanded his crew to throw overboard one-third of his cargo: a shipment of Africans bound for slavery in America. The captain believed his ship was off course, and he feared there was not enough drinking water to last until landfall. This book is the first to examine in detail the deplorable killings on theZong, the lawsuit that ensued, how the murder of 132 slaves affected debates about slavery, and the way we remember the infamousZongtoday.Historian James Walvin explores all aspects of theZong's voyage and the subsequent trial-a case brought to court not for the murder of the slaves but as a suit against the insurers who denied the owners' claim that their \"cargo\" had been necessarily jettisoned. The scandalous case prompted wide debate and fueled Britain's awakening abolition movement. Without the episode of theZong, Walvin contends, the process of ending the slave trade would have taken an entirely different moral and political trajectory. He concludes with a fascinating discussion of how the case of theZong, though unique in the history of slave ships, has come to be understood as typical of life on all such ships.

Current interest in a single-payer approach to universal health care coverage in the United States has also triggered interest in alternative multipayer approaches to the same goal. An analysis of experiences in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Israel shows how the founding of each system required a distinctive political settlement and how the subsequent timing, content, and course of the reforms were shaped by political circumstances and adjustments to the founding bargain in each nation. Although none of these systems is directly transferable to the United States, certain parallels with the American context suggest that a multipayer approach might offer a model for universal coverage that is more politically feasible than a single-payer scheme but also that issues associated with risk selection and other potential inequities would remain.

During the 1990s, as the researchers working on the Human Genome Project were racing to map and sequence the human genome, many members of the public were concerned that predictive genetic information could be used to discriminate in employment and various forms of insurance, including life, health, disability, and long-term care.1 By the end of the decade, 48 states had enacted laws prohibiting genetic discrimination in health insurance2 and 35 states prohibited genetic discrimination in employment.3 In 2008, Congress enacted the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA),4 which outlawed discrimination based on genetic information in health insurance and employment. There has been little meaningful legislation enacted at the state or federal level to limit the use of genetic information in other types of insurance, including life insurance. Most state laws on genetics and life insurance merely require insurers to obtain informed consent before performing genetic tests5 or prohibit the use of genetic information in underwriting unless there is a sound actuarial justification.6There are several reasons why neither Congress nor state legislatures have enacted significant laws prohibiting genetic discrimination in life insurance. Generally speaking, there has been inadequate public demand for such legislation and entrenched industry opposition. This article argues that sound public policy demands an end to the use of genetic test results in underwriting by life insurance companies. The article addresses the main rationales invoked for resisting any change from the status quo and presents the public policy considerations supporting an end to the use of genetic test results.The article distinguishes genetic test results from predictive genetic information. Genetic test results refers to both diagnostic and predictive test results on a single gene test, multiplex gene panel, whole genome sequencing (WGS), whole exome sequencing (WES), or comparable genetic or genomic tests. Predictive genetic information refers to genetic information obtained from an individual's medical record or the health histories of family members supplied by the applicant. There have been no reports of any American life insurance companies requiring genetic testing as a condition of applying for life insurance coverage, but all life insurers may obtain and use genetic test results from the clinical records of applicants. Life insurers also may learn an applicant's genetic information or genetic risks from his or her health history in clinical records as well as from the family health history supplied by the applicant.

200th Anniversary Article: Unfinished Journey — A Century of Health Care Reform in the U.S. In 1915, reformers issued the first major proposal for national health insurance in the United States. Nearly a century later, Americans are still debating health care reform, the perils of “socialized medicine,” and the tension between individual liberty and government aid. In 1915, reformers issued the first major proposal for national health insurance in the United States (see timeline). They believed that America should follow European countries such as Germany and England in securing access to medical care for workers and protecting them against the economic burdens of illness. The leadership of the American Medical Association (AMA) initially agreed, and the prospects for reform appeared promising. Yet by 1920, the health care reform campaign had failed, the victim of intense opposition (from businesses and the insurance industry, among others), bad timing (the American entry into World War I), demagoguery, and xenophobia . . .