Description
Projecting correctional facility-based health care into the community arena, Public Health Behind Bars: From Prisons to Communities examines the burden of illness in the growing prison population, and analyzes the considerable impact on public health as prisoners are released. More than forty practitioners, researchers, and scholars in correctional health, mental health, law, and public policy make a timely case for correctional health care that is humane for those incarcerated and beneficial to the communities they reenter. These authors offer affirmative recommendations toward that evolutionary step.
Chapter authors identify the most compelling health problems behind bars (including communicable disease, mental illness, addiction, and suicide), pinpoint systemic barriers to care, and explain how correctional medicine can shift from emergency or crisis care to primary care and prevention. In addition, strategies are outlined that link community health resources to correctional facilities so that prisoners can transition to the community without unnecessarily taxing public resources or falling through the cracks. Between the authors' research findings and practical suggestions, readers will find realistic answers to these and similar questions:
- Can transmission of HIV, tuberculosis, and other communicable diseases be reduced and prevented among prisoners?
- How can correctional facilities treat addiction more effectively?
- What can be done to improve diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders?
- Can correctional care benefit from quality management and performance measurement?
- How can care be coordinated between correctional and community health care providers?
- What are the health risks to communities if action is not taken?
Public Health Behind Bars: From Prisons to Communities is a challenge of immediate interest to readers in correctional health and medicine, public and community health, health care administration and policy, and civil rights.
Author: Robert B. Greifinger
Publisher: Springer
Published: 10/27/2022
Pages: 520
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 2.06lbs
Size: 10.00h x 7.00w x 1.10d
ISBN13: 9781071618097
ISBN10: 1071618091
BISAC Categories:
- Medical | Public Health
- Social Science | Criminology
- Medical | Preventive Medicine
About the Author
Robert B. Greifinger, MD is a healthcare policy and quality management consultant. His work focuses on design, management, and quality improvement in correctional healthcare systems. He has extensive experience in the development and management of complex community and institutional healthcare programs, and strengths in the bridging of clinical and public policy interests.
Dr. Greifinger has published extensively in the area of correctional health care. He has been a frequent speaker on public policy, communicable disease control and quality management in corrections. Dr. Greifinger was the principal investigator for the Report to Congress on Seizing Public Health Opportunities through Correctional Health Care, published in 2002. He was Co-Editor of the International Journal of Prisoner Health from 2010 - 2016. Dr. Greifinger is the editor of Public Health Behind Bars: From Prisons to Communities (1st Edition, 2007; 2nd Edition, 2022), Springer, New York. He currently serves as the Federal Court-appointed medical monitor for the jails in Miami, Florida; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Albuquerque, New Mexico.