Health Professor Updates Textbook to Include Current Content on COVID-19
Dr. Carleen Stoskopf has been working in the field of Public Health for over 43 years, first as an Environmental Health Officer in the Navy, and then turning to academics where she has focused her work on vulnerable populations. She started at the University of South Carolina, where her public health focus turned to African Americans and persons with HIV and mental illness. Dr. Stoskopf currently works at San Diego State University in the division of Health Management and Policy.
Dr. Stoskopf has a book entitled Comparative Health Systems: Global Perspectives, first published in 2010 and a second edition published in 2018. A third edition is planned for late 2023 and an online supplement is underway for this spring focusing on the impact of COVID-19. The book is published by Jones and Bartlett. The co-authors are Dr. James A. Johnson (East Michigan University) and Dr. Leiyu She (The Johns Hopkins University). The book looks at health systems around the world and discusses how countries put together their own healthcare systems. Dr. Stoskopf is interested in the idea that health systems are a result of our culture. A county’s health system is a social institution and reflects the values, the populations, politics, and environments of those countries. In the United States, we tend to be protective of our ability to make choices, and that is reflected in our healthcare system, which is market-based and often depends on an individual person’s ability to pay.
All the country chapters are co-authored by someone from the United States and an individual who lives in the country. There are chapters that set the stage for analysis, including such things as disease burden (chronic disease and infectious disease), environment and climate change, geo-political issues (refugee health and war), the role of international aid agencies (WHO, The World Bank, UN High Commission on Refugees). The book uses the WHO six building blocks of a health care system to organize the material.
The COVID-19 supplement is completely online and addresses the impact of the epidemic on different healthcare systems. Dr. Stoskopf is writing the chapter on health disparities in disease incidence, hospitalization rates, and mortality. There are health disparities due to race/ethnicity, poverty, educational levels, access to transportation, and cultural barriers in every country.