In
conjunction with Simon & Schuster, Harvard Medical School is publishing
a group of books for the public on wellness and illness. The first book,
published in October 1999, is the Harvard Medical School Family Health
Guide.
About the HARVARD
MEDICAL SCHOOL FAMILY HEALTH GUIDE
Summary
of the Book
The Harvard Medical School
Family Health Guide is a 1300-page book that brings you the latest
information — what you need to know to keep yourself and your
family healthy and to cope with illness. It also provides you with
the information you need to deal with the sometimes confusing and
frustrating world of managed care.
The book is available wherever books are sold. The book can be shipped
to you through collaboration between Harvard Medical School and Amazon.com.
To take advantage of the latest
medical advances, and to deal with the sometimes-confusing world of
health care, you need information that is clear, accurate, easily understandable
and accessible. This is what you will find in the Harvard Medical
School Family Health Guide.
The Harvard Medical School
Family Health Guide is more than the printed book. It is also
this Web site, called the Harvard Medical School Family Health
Guide On-line. This Web site makes the Harvard Medical School
Family Health Guide the "First Family
Health Guide That Will Never Go Out of Date."
Who
Created the Book?
For more than 200 years, doctors
from Harvard Medical School have provided state-of-the-art health
care to millions of people from New England and all over the world.
There are over 170 of us,
all members of the Harvard Medical School faculty, who edited this
book (print and on-line). We care for patients every day. We know
that people are faced with many confusing choices and with more health
information than ever before. We also know that the face-to-face
time you and your doctor have together can be limited.
We wrote the Harvard Medical
School Family Health Guide because we want you to have the
best of health care.
The First Family Health Guide Created For the Age of Managed Care
The Harvard Medical School
Family Health Guide helps you deal with the age of managed care
and HMOs.
The
Only Family Health Guide that Will Never Go Out of Date
We faculty from Harvard Medical
School will keep the Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide updated
for you on-line. We will bring you groundbreaking information on
wellness and illness, and lots more of the specially designed features
you will find so useful in the book.
The Harvard Medical School
Family Health Guide On-Line is not the whole book on-line.
Some parts of the book are included in the on-line site. However,
mostly what we provide for you on-line is information that is not in
the book — because it is new information since the
book was published, or because it is additional information
(or additional pictures) that we could not fit in the book.
The Harvard Medical School
Family Health Guide On-Line also takes advantage of the interactive
power of the Web.
Special Features of the Book
The special features in the Harvard
Medical School Family Health Guide book include:
Symptom
charts —
what do you do when you develop a particular symptom, such
as sudden pain in your abdomen? Is there a home remedy,
alternative medicine treatment, or over-the-counter medicine
you can get at the drugstore? When do you need to contact
the doctor? These easy-to-follow charts will help you determine
how you may be able to treat yourself, and when you need
to contact the doctor.
Advice
for when you visit your doctor — For
many common illnesses, we provide information about what should
happen when you visit your doctor — what issues you should
discuss and what kind of a physical examination and laboratory
tests your doctor should perform regularly. Think about and
write down questions to discuss with your doctor before your
visit. Knowing what to expect when you see your doctor can
also help you judge how thorough your care has been. Click
here for an example.
Advice on understanding medicines — Your
doctor may be too busy to fully explain all about your medicine, its
benefits, and its possible side effects. In the chapter Medicines,
we describe the major types of medicines that doctors prescribe today,
and what they are used for.
Advice on drug-drug
interactions and drug-herb interactions — The
Medicines chapter has an extensive chart of possible adverse reactions
between different drugs. If you are taking more than one medication,
or if you are taking conventional medications and herbal preparations,
you need to know if there might be a dangerous interaction between
them. We can show you what this might be.
Home remedies — You
don’t always need a doctor. In the Harvard Medical School
Family Health Guide, we offer home remedies that can give you
relief from common symptoms.
Alternative medicine treatments — A
variety of alternative medicine treatments are being seriously studied
at Harvard Medical School and elsewhere. Some have been found to be
helpful, and others risky. We tell you about them in the Harvard
Medical School Family Health Guide.
Advice
on understanding diagnostic tests — Modern
medicine uses many diagnostic tests. We describe what these
tests are and what they are used for. In our book, in the Guide
to Imaging, we show you the most sophisticated tests available.
We also describe many other tests performed in your doctor’s
office or that you can perform at home. The Harvard Medical
School Family Health Guide On-line contains much additional
information about diagnostic tests that is not found in the
book, including how you prepare for a test, and what happens
after the test is over.
Benefit and risk-assessment graphs — There
is so much health information available and, often, more than one
treatment for a problem. How do you choose among them? We provide
information in easy-to-follow graphs about the benefits and risks
of various diagnostic tests and treatments and the benefits of lifestyle
changes to keep healthy.
Advice from Harvard doctors — Some
of the best doctors on the Harvard Medical School faculty have provided
personal words of advice based on their experience — the advice
they give their own patients.
Personal stories — We
present the personal statements of people who have suffered from an
illness, and sometimes how they have coped with it. For example, author
John Updike describes what it is like to live with psoriasis, the actress
Patty Duke describes her experience with manic depression, and someone
anonymous — perhaps someone like you—talks about living with
lupus.
Understanding how your body works — Other
books describe how your body is built. We show you how your body
works — in colorful art that clearly depicts how you see, hear,
move, digest food, circulate blood, and so forth.
Advice on dealing with the healthcare system — Dealing
with the healthcare system can be a pain in the neck. The many different
kinds of health insurance policies and managed care programs can be
very confusing. Also, doctors are under increased pressure to see more
patients —
which means they have less time to spend with you. Throughout this
book, we provide information that will enable you to be your own
advocate in obtaining the best health care.
Advice on finding healthcare resources — In
the Appendix, we provide the names, addresses, phone numbers, and (when
available) Internet addresses of the agencies and organizations that
can help you with many different problems, particularly community support
services. Information we could not fit in the book is found here on
the Web site.
Glossary — A
glossary defining various medical terms.
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