Sexual and Reproductive Health: A Public Health Perspective

This volume brings together two areas of health that are among the foci of current development efforts, as articulated by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), namely sexual and reproductive health (MDG 5: improve maternal health, target 2: achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health); and Gender (MDG 3: promote gender equality and empower women). Few, if any, published books have dealt in a comprehensive way with public health aspects of these two strongly interrelated areas of health. Most published volumes devoted to sexual and reproductive health have a strong clinical focus, whereas books on gender tend to concentrate primarily on the socio-cultural and anthropological aspects of the subject.

Table of Contents:
Section 1: Physiology, General Epidemiology and Demography Section 2: Core Elements Section 3: Reproductive Cancers Section 4: Ethics and other General Aspects

About the Author :
Stella Quah (Ph.D) is Adjunct Professor, Health Services and Systems Research Program, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, National University of Singapore. Her previous appointment was as Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore where she started her long academic career in 1972, initially at the Department of Community Medicine and Public Health and later on at the Department of Sociology. She was a Fulbright-Hays scholar from 1969 to 1971. Her research and professional activities include sabbaticals as Research Associate and Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California Berkeley (1986–87); the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Department of Sociology at Harvard University (1993–94); the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University (1997); the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies, Stanford University (1997); the National Centre for Development Studies, Australian National University (2002); and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University (2006). She was elected Chairperson of the Research Committee on Health Sociology of the International Sociological Association (ISA) for the session 1990-1994; Vice-President for Research of ISA and Chairperson of the ISA Research Council for the session 1994-1998; and served as Associate Editor of International Sociology (1998–2004). As part of her current professional activities, Stella Quah serves in institutional review boards; and is member of international Editorial and Advisory Boards of several referee journals including the British Journal of Sociology and Sociology of Health and Illness. She has published extensively on health sociology, public policy and family sociology including the International Handbook of Sociology (London: Sage, 2000) edited with A. Sales and Families in Asia: Home and Kin (London: Routledge, 2008);. Among her publications on health sociology are “Crisis Prevention and Management during SARS Outbreak, Singapore”, Emerging Infectious Diseases, 10, 2: 364–368, 2004, with HP Lee; “Traditional Healing Systems and the Ethos of Science,” Social Science and Medicine, 57, 10:1997–2012, 2003; Crisis Preparedness: Asia and the Global Governance of Epidemics, ed. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Shorenstein APARC & Brookings Institution, 2007); “Public image and governance of epidemics: Comparing HIV/AIDS and SARS,” Health Policy, 80, 253–272, 2007; “Health and culture” in The New Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology (edited by W.C. Cockerham, 2010); and “Gender and the burden of disease in ten Asian countries”, Asia-Europe Journal, 8, 499-512, 2011.

Review :
"In 1994 the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (held in Cairo, Egypt) emphasized sexual and reproductive health services as central to sustainable development, and, additionally, developed a much expanded understanding of the issues. Human rights (and the right to good sexual and health services) came to the forefront, subsuming the notion that coercive measures to contain the population bomb could be justified. This volume presents current global thinking on physiology, general epidemiology, demography, the core elements of care, reproductive cancers, and some ethical and other general aspects." --Book News, Reference & Research