More than 100 contributors have collected a catalog of current health and social challenges for the fourth edition of Maternal and Child Health Practices. The text consists of 7 sections: "Background," "Delivery of Maternal Child Health Services," "Maternal Health," "The Infant and Child," "Adolescence," "Children with Special Health Care Needs," and "The Health of Mothers and Children Around the World." Public health practices and suggested solutions to the problems are provided.
The lack of national health insurance and a national health service is contrasted with the expenditure on "the highest percentage (14 percent) of its Gross Domestic Product for health care of any industrialized country," which is suggested to be responsible for some of the perceived deficiencies and is mentioned in several contexts.
Some improvements have occurred. For example, "it is not common today, as it was in the early period of the child health movement, for overt opposition to