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.
About the Author
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".
