Global Handbook on Noncommunicable Diseases and Health Promotion

Since the beginning of the 21st century, chronic diseases account for the majority of all deaths globally and represent an enormous financial burden on all countries, regardless of level of economic development. Originally defined as being long-term, generally incurable diseases of older persons, chronic diseases have increasingly been conceptualized as noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). These long-term afflictions are the leading health problems of the modern world and represent some of the greatest challenges to clinical, preventive medicine and health promotion at this time. Health promotion has arisen as an approach that is most critical in dealing with the broad array of causes of NCDs. Thus, this book addresses NCDs and health promotion in this global context. There is a widely recognized global incapacity to deal with chronic diseases. Furthermore, the needed capacity may vary enormously with level of development and multiple social and economic factors. Simple approaches that deal with single risk factors have enjoyed a modicum of success in some parts of the world, but today the salient opinion is that broad social and policy approaches are the long-term effective approaches. This book takes a critical perspective analyzing the relative success of recent and current approaches to addressing the challenges of the noncommunicable diseases in different social, economic, and political contexts. Because the extant literature addressing NCDs and health promotion appears to be primarily in the Western press and in an epidemiological context, this book makes every effort to offer discussions from other perspectives. Thus some of the sections of the book offer a lens or a critical perspective into the approach to chronic diseases. In addition each section addresses the state of the evidence for the effectiveness of the approach.

David V. McQueen is a global consultant in health promotion, based in Atlanta, GA, USA. and retired from 20 years at the CDC in Atlanta where he served government as Chief of the behavioral risk factor surveillance system (BRFSS), Director of the Division of Adult and Community Health (DACH) and as Associate Director for Global Health Promotion.  He has held Professorships on the faculties of the University of Edinburgh, where he directed the Research Unit in Health and Behavioral Change, 1983-1992, and The Johns Hopkins University, SHPH, 1972-1983. He also brings rich NGO experience as a globally elected Board Member of the International Union of  Health Promotion and Education as well as serving for 8 years at the Vice President for Science and 4 years as President; he is currently the Immediate past President of IUHPE. He has served on numerous consultancies and committees with the World Bank, WHO, the Canadian Government, as well as other public and private agencies.  He brings editorial experience as a member, present and past, of several editorial boards. He is widely published in academic journals and the author/editor of several books. He is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education at Emory University in Atlanta.