Health Change in the Asia-Pacific Region

This book was first published in 2007. The Asia-Pacific region has seen great social, environmental and economic change across the past century, leading to dramatic changes in the health profiles of all populations represented in South East and East Asia, Pacific Islands and the islands of Melanesia. This volume considers evidence concerning prehistoric migration, and colonial, regional and global processes in the production of health change in the Asia-Pacific region. Notably, it examines ways in which a health pattern dominated by under-nutrition and infection has been displaced in many ways, and is being displaced elsewhere by over-nutrition and the degenerative diseases associated with it. This book presents a cohesive view of the ways in which exchange relationships, economic modernization, migration and transnational linkages interact with changing rural subsistence ecologies to influence health patterns in this region. Review of the hardback: 'I enthusiastically recommend this book. It will appear especially to students and scholars of anthropology, public health, globalization and Pacific peoples.' Anthropological Science Review of the hardback: '... provides remarkable insights for social science researchers ...' Internationales AsienforumAcknowledgements; 1. Health change in the Asia-Pacific region: disparate end-points? Stanley J. Ulijaszek and Ryutaro Ohtsuka; 2. Interactions of nutrition, genetics and infectious disease in the Pacific; implications for prehistoric migrations Stephen Oppenheimer; 3. Biocultural adaptation and population connectedness in the Asia-Pacific region Ryutaro Ohtsuka; 4. Changing nutritional health in South East Asia Geoffrey C. Marks; 5. Obesity and nutritional health in Hong Kong Chinese people Gary T. C. Ko; 6. Modernization, nutritional adaptability and health in Papua New Guinean highlanders and Solomon Islanders Taro Yamauchi; 7. Tongan obesity: human ecological implications of its causes and consequences Tsukasa Inaoka, Yasuhiro Matsumura and Kazuhiro Suda; 8. Nutrition and health in modernizing Samoans: temporal trends and adaptive perspectives Ember D. Keighley, Stephen T. McGarvey, Christine Quested, Charles McCuddin, Satupaitea Viali and Uto'ofili A. Maga; 9. Health patterns of Pacific Islanders and Asians in the United States W. Parker Frisbie, Robert A. Hummer, T. Elizabeth Durden and Youngtae Cho; 10. Impacts of modernization and transnationalism on nutritional health of Cook Islanders Stanley J. Ulijaszek; 11. Mortality decline in the Pacific: economic development and other explanations Alistair Woodward and Tony Blakely; 12. Health changes in Papua New Guinea: from adaptation to double jeopardy? Robert Attenborough.