Outstanding Academic Titles 2024: Health Sciences

Enjoy this week's Outstanding Academic Titles list snippet: Five titles pertaining to Health Sciences

Posted on January 31, 2025 in Outstanding Academic Titles

Enjoy these five selections from the Choice Reviews 2024 Outstanding Academic Titles list. This week, we highlight Outstanding Academic Titles focused on Health Sciences. A hearty congratulations to the winning authors, editors, and publishers!

1. Why delusions matter
Bortolotti, Lisa. Bloomsbury Academic, 2023

People who hold delusional beliefs—beliefs that do not represent what the majority would view as reality—are typically stigmatized. In the present work, Bortolotti (philosophy, Univ. of Birmingham, England) presents an alternative approach to the topic. Rather than viewing delusions as solely negative, Bortolotti suggests that there can be benefits, such as providing people causal explanations for traumatic events, which can contribute to their well-being by giving them a consistent sense of self and motivation to engage with others in the world. The book consists of two parts: the first focuses on delusions, how they are personal, unshakable investments that influence behavior, how they are difficult for others to believe, and the extent to which they contribute to one’s identity. The second section of the book challenges the assumption that delusions are an indicator of psychological dysfunction. Instead, there may be advantages to holding delusional beliefs as long as they do not lead to self-harm. View on Amazon

2. Uncharted: how scientists navigate their own health, research, and experiences of bias
ed. by Skylar Bayer and Gabi Serrato Marks Columbia, 2023

This collection compiles 30 autobiographical narratives from persons with disabilities working, or formerly working, in STEM fields. The writers variously experience sensory challenges, neurodivergences and mental illnesses, mobility impairments, and diabetes and other chronic illnesses, such as MS or lupus. The joys of graduations and achievements are counterposed with accounts of bullying, being underestimated, and dismissed, and stories of physical exhaustion and stress from managing illness and disregard. The metaphor of the chart, taken from navigation, is used to describe the uniqueness of the contributors’ journeys, all at different stages of life and in their careers. Community and family support, assistive technologies, flexible workplace policies, and reliable health care are all things that facilitate success in STEM fields. The collection is entirely concerned with giving voice, and thus does not deeply engage the history of science as an institutional field, nor with scholarship in disability or crip studies, which would allow for more systemic reading across the experiences, something needed to generate policy and institutional responses that address the inequities and ablism assumed intrinsic to scientific work. View on Amazon

3. Black women’s reproductive health and sexuality: a holistic public health approach
ed. by Regina Moss Davis APHA, 2023

The contributors to this edited volume have created a veritable bible on Black women’s reproductive health. Beginning with a historical framework, each chapter discusses the origins and implications of the impacts of race, geographic region, historical context, and public health implications of the effects of intersectionality on Black women’s sexual health. While this compendium of essays claims not to be an exhaustive review, it does come close, based on all the extant information regarding this topic. Divided into four sections, this collection of 31 chapters begins with reimagining how scholars and practitioners research Black women’s sexuality and reproductive health before addressing the myths and falsehoods that society holds, and that the mainstream media promotes, about this topic. From there the sections turn to activism and then finally to centering holistic ways of knowing and caring for Black women’s bodies, souls, and overall sexual and reproductive well-being. View on Amazon

4. Looking through the speculum: examining the women’s health movement Houck, Judith A. Chicago, 2024

In this deeply researched and engaging work, Judith A. Houck (history and gender and women’s studies, Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison) examines the impact of the women’s liberation movement on healthcare options for American women over the last 50 years. The book is divided into four sections: cervical self-exam (hence the book’s title) and the self-help gynecological movement it spawned; access to abortion; lesbian health concerns; and issues around access to healthcare for women of color. Houck looks at four women’s health clinics, three in northern California and one in San Francisco, while simultaneously providing the national context. As the author makes clear, both internal struggles and outside criticism challenged these clinics on an almost daily basis, each responding in a variety of ways. In the end, the clinics survived as women’s healthcare evolved over the last five decades. Extensive use of existing secondary sources as well as a wealth of primary sources, including interviews done by the author with a variety of participants and activists, makes this a compelling and informative read. View on Amazon.

5. Using population descriptors in genetics and genomics research: a new framework for an evolving field by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine et al National Academies Press, 2023

This critical Consensus Study Report was commissioned by the National Institutes of Health and produced by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Its intention is to clarify the scientific rationales for describing research participants and their group labels, focusing on the current imprecise use of race and ethnicity descriptors. Highlights include 13 recommendations to motivate researchers to consider when and how many population descriptors are necessary, which ones are appropriate for what type of study, and what additional information may be needed for accuracy. A 17-member committee of diverse experts conducted outreach, a literature review, and held open meetings and public workshops to develop a framework consisting of five guiding principles falling into three categories: (1) requisites to achieve sustained change in genetics and genomics practice and research, (2) guidance and best practices for researchers concerning the use of population descriptors organized by type of genomics study, and (3) implementation and accountability strategies for relevant parties supporting work in the genomics research ecosystem. This must-read guidebook ends with an outstanding decision tree guiding researchers on how to use population descriptors for their own proposed research. View on Amazon.

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