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How can we prepare for the next global epidemic? Shorenstein APARC publishes new book on crisis preparedness

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Throughout history, nations have waged war against epidemics from bubonic plague to pulmonary tuberculosis. Today we confront HIV/AIDS, SARS, and avian influenza, among other major infectious diseases. Scientists around the world scrutinize viruses and bacteria more intently than ever. Yet while scientific advances are crucial, they are insufficient. The world is not well prepared for the next health crisis.

This timely book argues that the battle against infectious disease epidemics must be fought on two fronts. The first, of course, is the laboratory. The second is the wider social context that involves ordinary individuals and groups, legislators, and the state. The failure to contain HIV/AIDS and the emergence of new infectious diseases highlight the inadequacies of current preventive and management approaches to deal with epidemics.

The authors of Crisis Preparedness offer perspectives from social science, epidemiology, and public health, collectively seeking to answer the question: How can we prepare for the next global epidemic?

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Crisis Preparedness: Asia and the Global Governance of Epidemics

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Throughout history, nations have waged war against epidemics, from bubonic plague to pulmonary tuberculosis. Today, we confront HIV/AIDS, SARS, and avian influenza, among other major infectious diseases. The failure to contain HIV/AIDS, the longest contemporary pandemic, and the difficulties in dealing with the threat posed by avian influenza, show that the world is not well prepared for the next health crises. Because preventing and controlling these infectious diseases is a race against time, scientists around the world scrutinize viruses and bacteria more intently than ever. Yet while scientific advances are crucial, they are insufficient.

This timely book addresses the urgent need to study the governance of infectious disease epidemics, and argues that the battle must be fought on two fronts, simultaneously. The first is within the laboratory; the second is located in a wider social context that involves ordinary individuals, groups, communities, legislators, and the state. Research by medical sociologists and other social scientists indicates that many factors influence people's behavior and, in turn, the level of success in preventing and containing an infectious disease epidemic.

Using Asia as a case study, Crisis Preparedness discusses the inadequacies of current preventive and management approaches to deal with epidemics. The distinguished international contributors to this volume present perspectives from the fields of social science, epidemiology, and public health, and collectively seek to answer the pressing question: How can we prepare for the next global epidemic?

About the Editor: Stella R. Quah is professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore. She is on the advisory boards of the British Journal of Sociology, Health Sociology Review, and Asian Population Studies. She also serves as editor of the Health Systems Section, Encyclopedia of Public Health (Elsevier).

This title is now out of print. You may download individual chapters below:

Front matter and preface (includes chapter 1) 

  1. Governance of Epidemics: Is There a Reason for Concern? (Stella R. Quah)
  2. The Global Governance of Epidemics: Possibilities and Limitations (Jim Whitman)
  3. Responding to Epidemic Disease Threats in Burma and Lessons for China: Why Good Governance Matters (Chris Beyrer)
  4. Global and Local Strategies against HIV/AIDS in South and Southeast Asia: The Cases of India and Thailand (Graham Scambler)
  5. Taming the Tiger: The Success and Failure of HIV/AIDS Policies in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and China (Kari Hartwig)
  6. On Trust and Health Consensus-building in the Governance of Epidemics (Stella R. Quah)
  7. Global Public Health Research Preparedness against Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases (Gabriel M. Leung)
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Dr. Karen Eggleston to lead Shorenstein APARC's comparative healthcare in East asia program

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Dr. Karen Eggleston will join the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as a center fellow on July 1, 2007. Dr. Eggleston will lead the center's program on comparative health care in East Asia.

Dr. Eggleston's research focuses on comparative healthcare systems and their link to broader social protection policies during economic development and transition from central planning to market-based economies; payment incentives and their impact on healthcare insurer and provider behavior; the market structure of healthcare, including competition, integration, ownership, and healthcare productivity; and incentives surrounding health behaviors such as the spread of HIV/AIDS, overuse of antibiotics, and smoking. She studied in China for two years and was a Fulbright scholar in Korea.

Eggleston earned her Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University in 1999. She has an M.A. in economics and another in Asian studies from the University of Hawaii, Economics (August 1995 and May 1992, respectively.) She is currently an assistant professor of economics at Tufts University in Boston. Dr. Eggleston joined the faculty at Tufts in 1999.

Currently, Dr. Eggleston is a research associate at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and an academic program coordinator at the Kennedy School Health Care Delivery Policy Program also at Harvard. Dr. Eggleson has been a research associate at the China Academy of Health Policy (CAHP) at Peking University, Beijing, China since 2003 and in the summer of 2004 she was a consultant to the World Bank on their project on health service delivery and the rural health sector.

"Karen will be a great addition to the center," says director of the center, Gi-Wook Shin.

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Stella Quah

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6402 (650) 723-6530
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Stella Quah, (PhD, University of Singapore; M.Sc [sociology], Florida State University) is professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore. She was a Fulbright Hays scholar from 1969 to 1971. Since 1986 she has spent academic sabbaticals as research associate and visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California Berkeley; the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Department of Sociology at Harvard University; the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University; the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies, Stanford University; and the National Centre for Development Studies, Australian National University.

Professor Quah was elected vice president for research of the International Sociological Association (ISA); chairperson of the ISA Research Council for the session 1994-98; and served as associate editor of International Sociology (1998-2004).

Among her professional activities, Professor Quah serves on two institutional review boards; is member of the Society for Comparative Research; member of the International Advisory Board of the British Journal of Sociology; member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Health Sociology Review, the journal of the health section of the Australian Sociological Association; member of the editorial board of Marriage & Family Review; member of the International Advisory Board of Asian Population Studies; editor of the Sociology in Asia Series; and editor of the Health Systems Section, Encyclopedia of Public Health (Elsevier Inc).

Professor Quah's main areas of research are medical sociology, social policy, and family sociology. The complete list of her publications is at http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/socquahs.

Stella Quah Visiting Scholar, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford and Professor, Department of Sociology National University of Singapore Speaker
Jim Whitman Director, MA Programme, Department of Peace Studies, School of Social and International Studies, Speaker University of Bradford, United Kingdom
Chris Beyrer Director, Johns Hopkins Fogarthy AIDS International Training and Research Program, Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights, Speaker Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Graham Scambler Director, Unit of Medical Sociology, and Deputy Director,The Centre for Behavioural and Social Sciences in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Clinical Sciences Speaker University College London
Kari Hartwig Division of Global Health, Dept of Epidemiology and Public Health Speaker Yale School of Medicine
DK Owens Speaker
Gabriel M. Leung Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine Speaker University of Hong Kong
Workshops

Creating Wealth and Poverty in China

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In the run-up to the Olympics, China is a country of contradictions. On one hand, market reforms since 1980 have radically improved living standards across the vast country and dramatically decreased the levels of absolute poverty. On the other hand, the distribution of income and wealth has become more unequal, hard-core urban poverty has returned, and there are new concentrations of enormous wealth among a small minority. Drawing on fieldwork and survey results collected since 1998, Professor Davis will discuss how the accelerated commodification of assets and the internationalization of capital have re-shaped accumulation of material and non-material rewards at individual and group levels. In concluding, she addresses competing hypotheses about class formation and consolidation of privilege.

Deborah S. Davis (Ph.D. Boston University, 1979) is a Professor of Sociology at Yale University. Her primary teaching interests are historical and comparative sociology, inequality and stratification, contemporary Chinese society, and methods of fieldwork. Davis is currently a member of the National Committee on US China Relations and serves on the editorial boards of The European Journal of East Asian Studies, Social Forces and the new Yale China Health Journal. Past publications have analyzed the politics of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese family life, social welfare, class cleavages and occupational mobility. She is currently completing two books: A Home of Their Own, a study of the social consequences of privatization of real estate in Shanghai and Wealth and Poverty in China Today, proceedings from conference held at Yale on how recent Chinese experiences challenge prevailing sociological analysis of inequality and stratification. She also is actively involved in research and advocacy work in response to the AIDS epidemic in China.

This series is co-sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University.

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Deborah Davis Professor of Sociology Speaker Yale University
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HIV/AIDS in China

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There are currently an estimated 840,000 people in China who are infected with HIV. The largest two groups that have been affected are injection drug users and former plasma donors. Recent demographic and economic changes in China could and may be fueling an increase in sexual transmission in China. Dr. Nancy Shulman will give a brief overview of HIV in China and the governmental response. Future collaborative efforts with Stanford will also be discussed.

Co-sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies

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Nancy Shulman Instructor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, School of Medicine, Stanford University Speaker
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Call for proposals: Shorenstein APARC establishes new fund for comparative health care policy research

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The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University invites applications to receive funding grants for activities or programs focusing on health care policy in Asia. Shorenstein APARC welcomes research proposals on a wide range of topics from diverse disciplines, but has particular interest in international studies of demography; the effects of an aging population on social, economic, and political systems; and the causes and prevention of epidemics such as AIDS and Avian Influenza in Asian countries.

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Healthcare Payment Incentives: A Comparative Analysis of Reforms in Taiwan, South Korea and China

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Payment incentives have significant consequences for the equity and efficiency of a health care system, and have recently come to the fore in health policy reforms. This paper first discusses the economic rationale for apparent international convergence toward payment systems with mixed demand and supply-side cost sharing. We then summarize the recent payment reforms undertaken in Taiwan, Korea and China. Available evidence clearly indicates that incentives matter, and that supply-side cost sharing in particular can improve efficiency without undermining equity. Further study and monitoring of quality and selection is warranted.

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Applied Health Economics and Health Policy
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Karen Eggleston

Healthcare Policy in Japan: Challenges and Opportunities

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Dr. Kiyoshi Kurokawa received his MD degree in 1962 from the University of Tokyo Faculty of Medicine. Currently, Dr. Kurokawa serves as president of both the Science Council of Japan and the Pacific Science Association. He is also adjunct professor at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology of the University of Tokyo and of the Institute of Medical Sciences of Tokai University. He is professor emeritus of the University of Tokyo and serves as a member of the Committee for Science and Technology Policy of the Cabinet Office and several committees for Prime Minister Koizumi's office.

Co-sponsored with the Center for Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research.

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Kiyoshi Kurokawa President Science Council of Japan
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STDs and HIV in China 2002: 'Titanic Peril' or Emergent Prevention Opportunity?

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Dr. Myron Cohen spoke earlier this year at the UN on AIDS in China. He has been very active in organizing medical research on AIDS in China and only recently returned from a conference held there in November on the subject.

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