Main 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.

Feature:

Contributors drawn from public health, correctional health, civil rights law, and sociology

Back cover:

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.

Contents:

Impact of Law and Public Policy on Correctional Populations.- Thirty Years Since Estelle v. Gamble: Looking Forward, Not Wayward.- Impact of Incarceration on Community Public Safety and Public Health.- Litigating for Better Medical Care.- Accommodating Disabilities in Jails and Prisons.- Growing Older: Challenges of Prison and Reentry for the Aging Population.- International Public Health and Corrections: Models of Care and Harm Minimization.- The Medicalization of Execution: Lethal Injection in the United States.- Communicable Disease.- HIV and Viral Hepatitis in Corrections: A Public Health Opportunity.- Prevention of Viral Hepatitis.- HIV Prevention: Behavioral Interventions in Correctional Settings.- Prevention and Control of Tuberculosis in Correctional Facilities.- Controlling Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, and Syphilis Through Targeted Screening and Treatment in Correctional Settings.- Primary and Secondary Prevention.- Health Promotion in Jails and Prisons: An Alternative Paradigm for Correctional Health Services.- Screening for Public Purpose: Promoting an Evidence-based Approach to Screening of Inmates to Improve Public Health.- Written Health Informational Needs for Reentry.- Reducing Inmate Suicides Through the Mortality Review Process.- Blinders to Comprehensive Psychiatric Diagnosis in the Correctional System.- Juvenile Corrections and Public Health Collaborations: Opportunities for Improved Health Outcomes.- Female Prisoners and the Case for Gender-Specific Treatment and Reentry Programs.- Building the Case for Oral Health Care for Prisoners: Presenting the Evidence and Calling for Justice.- Tertiary Prevention.- Treatment of Mental Illness in Correctional Settings.- Treatment and Reentry Approaches for Offenders with Co-occurring Disorders.- Pharmacological Treatment of Substance Abuse in Correctional Facilities: Prospects and Barriers to Expanding Access to Evidence-Based Therapy.- Thinking Forward to Reentry—Reducing Barriers and Building Community Linkages.- Health Research Behind Bars: A Brief Guide to Research in Jails and Prisons.- Reentry Experiences of Men with Health Problems.- Providing Transition and Outpatient Services to the Mentally Ill Released from Correctional Institutions.- Sexual Predators: Diversion, Civil Commitment, Community Reintegration, Challenges, and Opportunities.- Electronic Health Records Systems and Continuity of Care.- Community Health and Public Health Collaborations.- Improving the Care for HIV-Infected Prisoners: An Integrated Prison-Release Health Model.