Modern Environments and Human Health: Revisiting the Second Epidemiologic Transition demonstrates by example how methods, theoretical approaches, and data from a wide range of disciplines can be used to resolve longstanding questions about the second epidemiologic transition - the shift from a high burden of epidemic, infectious illness to greater morbidity and mortality from chronic and degenerative diseases.

Understanding how, why, and when the transition occurred across different regions and communities can provide critical insight into the relationships between economic growth, environmental quality and change, and human health. This comprehensive book brings together skeletal, archaeological, biodemographic, geochemical, environmental, epidemiological, cemetery, social history, and parasitological data to shed light on this important epidemiologic transition, and to inform current debates on the best ways to allocate public health funding in developed and developing countries.

The first book to address the second epidemiologic transition from a multi-regional, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspective, Modern Environments and Human Health will be a valuable resource for students and academics in biological anthropology, economics, history, public health, demography, and epidemiology.

Key features include:

* discusses the second epidemiologic transition from a multi-regional, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspective

* brings together skeletal, archaeological, biodemographic, geochemical, environmental, epidemiological, cemetery, social history, and parasitological data

* written in an engaging and jargon-free style by a team of international and interdisciplinary experts

* provides significant detail on data, methods and findings for potential replication