HEALTH, HEALTH POLICY, AND HEALTH SERVICES
REVISED, 2007*
Arthur L. Greil, Alfred University
Jeanne Calabro, Brandeis University
Jean Elson, Brandeis University
The Division of Health, Health Policy, and Health Services is dedicated to the critical study of all aspects of health care delivery in our society. Our concerns include but are not limited to:
1. The study of the social sources of disease and disability in industrial and developing societies: Members of the Division are especially interested in the effects of race, class, and gender on the distribution of health, illness, and disability. Members are also interested in the ways in which social structural features of society (e.g.: the organization of work, the distribution of income, the operation of social welfare institutions, environmental policy, etc.) may affect the health of populations.
2. The study of social definitions of health and illness, both within and outside the health professions: Members of the Division are especially interested in the power of the medical profession to define the meaning of health and illness and in the efforts of clients and patients to enhance their own self-determination. Members also study experiences of health, illness and disability and the ways social structural arrangements shape those experiences.
3. The study of the delivery of health care at the level of patient/provider interaction as well as at the institutional level: Members of the Division examine the composition and practices of the various health care professions aw well as the structure and operation of health care delivery institutions, such as hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, manufactures and marketers of medical products, emergency medical services and complementary and alternative medicine.
4. The comparative study of health care delivery systems and health care policies: Division members seek to understand the ways in which macro-level structures and policies affect individual lives and to explore possibilities for reform and reconstruction of health care systems.
The Division of Health, Health Policy, and Health Services includes a number of scholars and activists with diverse point of view. Recognizing the essential link between inequalities structured around race, class, gender and sexuality and health, many members of the Division view social justice and justice in health as inseparable, with disparities in health firmly grounded in the socially structured inequalities that shape access to the resources necessary to maintain health. Justice in health, therefore, requires addressing underlying social and economic injustices. Although it is hazardous to generalize about the views or vision of the Divison as a whole, for most members, a just world in relation to health issues would be one in which the preservation and restoration of health would be seen as a basic human right. Justice in health would mean that all people would have adequate resources for preserving health and adequate access to health care regardless of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, disability or region. Just in health would also mean that all people would have access to the informal and material resources that would enable them to maximize their control over all decisions which directly and indirectly affect their health.
While few members of the Division would see any other nation as having a “perfect” health care system or as providing a model which could be replicated in the United States without modification, most members would probably agree that most other “Western” industrialized societies have come closer to realizing the conception of health care as a basic human right. On a smaller scale, many members of the Division might look toward certain types of free standing clinics and mutual help groups as sources for ideas for new models of health care. Perhaps the greatest obstacles to the reform of health care in the United States are: the sheer magnitude of social inequality; a health care system that is based on conceptualizing health as a commodity; and a “medical” model of health that obscures and discounts the importance of the experience of patients and clients.
Resources to help those who work outside the area of medical sociology gain an appreciation of critical perspectives on health and illness
Abraham, Laurie Kaye. Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: The Failure of Health Care in America. Chicago:University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Anspach, Renee. Deciding Who Lives: Fateful Choices in the Intensive Care Nursery. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Berkman, Lisa and Kawachi, Ichiro (eds), Social Epidemiology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Brown, Phil (ed.) Perspectives in Medical Sociology, 2nd Edition. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1996
Charmaz, Kathy. Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in chronic Illness and Time. New Brunswich, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1991.
Conrad, Peter. The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Conrad, Peter (ed). The Sociology of Health and Illness: Critical Perspectives, 7th Ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005.
Conrad, Peter and Joseph Schneider. Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.
Dubos, Rene. Mirage of Health. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959.
Farmer, Paul. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Fiedson, Eliot. Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of applied Knowledge. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970.
Freudenberg, Nicholas, Galea, Sandro, Vlahov, David. Cities and the Health of the Public. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006.
Fullilove, Mindy. Root Shock: How Tearing Up Urban Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It. New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2005.
Horwitz, Allan and Wakefield, J. The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976.
Klinenberg, Kevin. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
LaViest, Thomas. Minority Populations and Health: An Introduction to Health Disparities in the United States. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass Publishers, 2005.
LaViest, Thomas (ed). Race, Ethnicity and Health: A Public Health Reader. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass Publishers, 2002.
Martin, Emily. Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Martin, Emily. The Woman in the Body. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.
Metzl, Jonathan. Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs. Duke University Press, 2003.
Mischler, Elliot. The Discourse of Medicine. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1984.
Schulz, AJ and Mullings L. Gender, Race, Class and Health: Intersectional Approaches. San Fancisco, CA: Jossey Bass Publishers, 2006.
Shapiro, Joseph. No Pity: People With disabilities Forging A New Civil Rights Movement. New York: Times Books, 1993.
Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books, 1982.
Weitz, Rose. The Sociology of Health, Illness and Health Care: A Critical Approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1996.
Zola, Irving Kenneth. Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living With a Disability. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982.
* Update respectfully submitted by: Amy J. Schulz, University of Michigan (Co-Chair 2006-2008); Valerie Leiter, Simmons College (Co-Chair 2005-2007); Emily Ihara, George Mason University (Co-Chair 2007-2009).