Book description
Exposing a developing embryo or fetus to alcohol can produce life long
brain damage with neurological, cognitive and behavioural consequences.
The implications of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder for the affected
individual and the family are devastating. The social and economic
burden to society is enormous with formidable expenditures in health
care, mental health care, education, social services and possibly
correctional services. Prevention has been a goal since the condition
was medically described and defined forty years ago, but has remained
elusive but feasible. This book reviews the evidence for effective
strategies. It lays out what needs to be done. The book should be of
great value to policy makers, clinicians, researchers and others
advocating for action against this condition that is reducing the
potential of our society and sapping its resources.
Sterling Clarren is CEO and Scientific Director of the Canada
Northwest FASD Research Network and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at
the Faculty of Medicine of the University of British Columbia; Clinical
Professor of Pediatrics.
Amy Salmon, PhD is the Managing Director of the Canada Northwest FASD
Research Network. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of
Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, and
holds research appointments with the Women?s Health
Research Institute, the Centre for Addictions Research of BC, and the
University of Victoria.
Egon Jonsson is director and CEO of the Institute of Health Economics,
and professor at the University of Alberta, public health sciences. For
20 years he was a professor of health economics at the Karolinska
Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. He was also director of the Swedish
Council on Health Technology Assessment (SBU), worked for WHO Euro, and
was a health policy advisor at the ministry of health in Hanoi, Vietnam.
He has co-edited two successful Wiley-VCH titles during his time at SBU:
"Treating and Preventing Obesity" and "Treating Alcohol
and Drug Abuse".
