Healthy Outlook Division of Health, Health Policy and Health Services of the Society for the Study of Social Problems Fall 2009/Winter 2010 Inside this issue: Statement from 1 Co-Chair Student Paper 2 Competition 2010 Conference 2-3 News of Note 4 Fellowship 5 Opportunity Call for 6 Nominations Statement from the Co-Chair Debi Street I am honored to join Edna A. Viruell-Fuentes as co-chair of the Division of Health, Health Policy, and Health Services. Our Division has a strong and committed membership, thanks to the talented Division co-chairs who have served it in the past. What a wonderful opportunity it is for me to serve a Division with a focus—health policy—that has been a near-obsession for me since I immigrated to the United States nearly 25 years ago. Although I didn’t frame it that way when it happened, it was an unthinkable interaction (for a Canadian) with the U.S. health care system that inspired my sociological imagination and eventually an academic career centered on trying to understand health care in the United States. Only weeks after my family immigrated, an admission clerk in an emergency room in Florida’s Panhandle, said: “Unless you can prove you can pay, we can’t see you. You’ll have to go to the public hospital.” It was nearly midnight on a Saturday in an unfamiliar place; the nearest public hospital was 40 miles away. I was in tears from the pain [my empirical study, N=1, finds that kidney stones hurt more than giving birth] and disbelief that a health care system could “act” that way. Still, my personal problems quickly evaporated. The kidney stones passed, and our group health insurance cards soon arrived in the mail. I remember thinking at the time, “Canadians take this for granted; we have no idea how lucky we are…” Millions of Americans are not so lucky. Social scientists and clinicians have demonstrated how lifestyle influences health, and how SES and community characteristics are interwoven to structure chances of enacting healthy lifestyles. Individual behavior and social structures matter, a lot. Healthfulness also has an unavoidable element of luck that no social intervention can change. But access to health care should not and need not depend on luck. We can change the rules of the game for accessing health care in the U.S. As our newsletter goes to press, the U.S. House has passed its “historic” bill on health reform, and we hold our collective breath to see what the Senate will do next. Members of the Division of Health, Health Policy and Health Services have been at the forefront of research and advocacy for meaningful health reform. At next summer’s Atlanta meeting, will we celebrate fundamental change in meeting our nation’s health care needs? Or will we have to settle for Frankenreform--a nut here and bolt there connecting some to better access, a few insurance loopholes stitched up, all electrified at a self-congratulatory meeting of politicians eyeing their re-election hopes, once again putting the interests of medical industry corporate donors ahead of the health care needs of ordinary folks? Most of us probably hope for a truly historic spasm towards social justice and universal access rather than tottering, arms reaching, towards the illusion of Frankenreform. But only time will tell. Our Division follows SSSP President JoAnn Miller’s charge to focus on social justice work with a thematic session, Building on the Legacy of Health Activism in SSSP, to showcase career-long work by some of the Division’s most esteemed scholar-activists. Our talented Division members will also offer analytic insights into the victories (there will be some) and the defeats (some of those, too) associated with U.S. health care reform in sessions co-sponsored with other Divisions. But social justice in health encompasses much more than the formalities associated with health insurance legislation. Beyond several sessions that focus on health care reform, there are equally illuminating sessions planned to explore issues associated with health and reproductive justice, immigrant experiences, disability, and sport, among others. Research roundtables offer opportunities for important areas of study that could not be accommodated in regular sessions, providing an expansive opportunity for many traditions of health-related scholarship. Please consider submitting your work for presentation in one of the Division’s sessions at the SSSP Annual Meeting. Please note that the deadline for submissions is January 31, 2010. I know that Edna and I, along with our fellow members of the Division of Health, Health Policy, and Health Services, look forward to hearing about important new work by esteemed and aspiring scholars who advance the causes of social justice in health. See you in Atlanta - it should be an exciting meeting! Graduate Student Paper Competition The Health, Health Policy, and Health Services Division invites all graduate students to apply for this annual paper award competition. The paper should be related to the broad Division interest, including health and illness, health policy, and health services. The paper submission should not exceed 30 double-spaced pages and should be prepared for anonymous review (with the author specified on a title page but not referred to in other parts of the text). Current graduate students and recent graduates (who received their degrees after January 2009) may submit a paper if it was written while still a student. Papers based on theses or dissertations are acceptable. (Please do not submit the thesis or dissertation itself.) Co-authored papers are acceptable as long as all the listed authors are current graduate students. Double submission to other SSSP award competitions will be disqualified. The award recipient will be required to present the winning paper at the 2010 SSSP Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA. Thus it is strongly recommended that an abstract of the paper be submitted to any Health Division session organizer or the roundtable organizer by the January 31st deadline. The recipient will receive a monetary prize of $100, student membership to SSSP, SSSP conference registration, and a ticket to the SSSP awards banquet. Send an electronic copy of the paper (in Word format) and a cover letter identifying your graduate program to: Professor Elizabeth Ettorre, e.ettorre@liverpool.ac.uk . 2010 Conference: Atlanta, August 13-15 The 60th Annual Meeting of SSSP will be held in Atlanta, GA this year at The Sheraton Atlanta Hotel (165 Courtland Street NE). Please see the call for papers on the SSSP website at: http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/374/fuseaction/ssspsession2.publicView Also, please see the information for the 2010 Student Paper Competitions and Outstanding Scholarship Awards: http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/296 Edna A. Viruell-Fuentes Division Co-Chair University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Latina and Latino Studies Program eviruell@illinois.edu Debra Street Division Co-Chair The State University of New York at Buffalo dastreet@buffalo.edu 2010 Conference Sessions Health, Health Policy, and Health Services Division Society for the Study of Social Problems Proposed Sessions for the 2010 Annual Meeting Theme: Social Justice Work Thematic Sessions Building on the Legacy of Health Activism in SSSP Organizers: Emily S. Ihara, eihara@gmu.edu Debora A. Paterniti, dapaterniti@ucdavis.edu Immigrant Health and Social Justice Organizers: Jin Young Choi, jyc002@shsu.edu Edna Viruell-Fuentes, eviruell@illinois.edu Social (In)Justice and The Politics of Health Care Reform Organizers: Arthur L. Greil, fgreil@alfred.edu Debra Street, dastreet@buffalo.edu Youth Sport, Health, and Social Justice (co-sponsored with Sport, Leisure, and the Body) Organizer: Todd Crosset, tcrosset@sportmgt.umass.edu Division Roundtables Health, Health Policy, and Health Services Roundtables Organizer: Edna Viruell-Fuentes, eviruell@illinois.edu Co-sponsored Sessions Health, Mental Health and Crime (with Crime and Juvenile Delinquency; Mental Health) Organizer: Mark F. Peyrot, mpeyrot@loyola.edu Health and Disabilities (with Disabilities) Organizer: Alexis A. Bender, alexisab@bellsouth.net Non-Medical Prescription Drug Use: Current Problems (with Drinking and Drugs; Program Committee) Organizer: Stephen E. Lankenau, sel59@drexel.edu Social Justice, the Environment, and Health (with Environment and Technology) Organizer: Erin E. Robinson, robinso5@canisius.edu Reproductive Justice (with Family) Organizers: Elizabeth Ettorre, e.ettorre@liverpool.ac.uk Miranda R. Waggoner, waggoner@brandeis.edu Global Health and Social Justice (with Global) Organizers: Elizabeth Ann Gage, elizabeth.gage@roswellpark.org Debra Street, dastreet@buffalo.edu Health Policy and Inequality (Papers in the Round) (with Poverty, Class, and Inequality) Organizer: Sue Bell, sue.bell@mnsu.edu Health Care Reform and Societal Aging (with Youth, Aging, and the Life Course) Organizers: Leah Rogne, leah.rogne@mnsu.edu Debra Street, dastreet@buffalo.edu News of Note! R. Tyson Smith has begun a new postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University to study the mental health of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Dennis P. Watson has received $108,000 grant from NIDA for his dissertation study titled “Housing First Model Fidelity and Implications for Substance Abuse Treatment.” MEMBER PUBLICATIONS Cabin, W.’s article “Unleashing the Ghost of home care: The case for a national Alzheimer’s disease home care demonstration project,” Journal of Long Term Home Health Care, 28 (2) is in press (2010), as are Cabin, W. “Lifting the home care veil from depression: OASIS-C and evidence-based practice,” Home Health Care Management and Practice, 22 (3) AND Lang, S. H., Cabin, W. D., Cotton, C., & Domizio, L. A. “Using Evidence-based instruments to document eligibility and improve Quality of life of hospice patients,” Home Health Care Management and Practice, 22 (3), Newport Beach, CA. Kerry Dobransky has a new article (2009), “The Good, the Bad, and the Severely Mentally Ill: Official and Informal Labels as Organizational Resources in Community Mental Health Services” Social Science and Medicine 69:722-728. George W. Dowdall’s book, College Drinking: Reframing a Social Problem, has been published by Praeger. Information about the book is available at collegedrinkingbook.com. Stephen J. Morewitz's book, Aging and Chronic Disorders (New York: Springer, 2007), was placed on the Barnes & Noble.com Bestseller List in Chronic Diseases. Linda Morrison’s book, Talking Back to Psychiatry: The Consumer/Survivor/Ex-Patient Movement (Routledge 2005) has just been released in a paperback edition. Edna A. Viruell-Fuentes and Amy J. Schulz recently (2009) published the article “Toward a Dynamic Conceptualization of Social Ties and Context: Implications for Understanding Immigrant and Latino Health” in the American Journal of Public Health, 99(12): 2167-2175. Joseph D. Wolfe’s article “Age at First Birth and Alcohol Use” is out in the December issue of the Journal of Health & Social Behavior. Free PDF copies of Frank W. Young’s Handbook for Ecological Regional Analysis (73 pages) may be downloaded by a "Request Handbook" message to the author (fwy1@cornell.edu). The monograph explains how to measure the social structure of counties and districts so that the variables can be linked to measures of population health. The text includes worked examples for South Carolina, Chihuahua (Mexico) and Nepal. CONGRATULATIONS! Please send News to: Miranda Waggoner waggoner@brandeis.edu Additional items that might be of interest to our Division members: Post-Doctoral Fellowship U N I V E R S I T Y O F I L L I N O I S A T U R B A N A – C H A M P A I G N Latina/Latino Studies Program The Fellowship • A one-year non-renewable fellowship beginning August 16, 2010 for the 2010-2011 Fiscal Year. • In addition to his/her research project, the fellow will be expected to teach one introductory course for the Program during the academic year and make presentation on his/her research project. • The fellow will be housed at the Latina/Latino Studies Program, receive a salary of $42,000 over the 12-month fellowship period, and will receive University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign employee benefits. To Apply Candidates must have completed their Ph.D. before the inception of the fellowship. The primary focus of the successful candidate's research must be U.S. Latina/Latino communities. Preference will be given to candidates who examine the Latina/Latino experience from an interdisciplinary perspective. Candidates should submit a curriculum vitae, a statement of the research project to be undertaken during the fellowship year, official graduate transcripts, and three letters of recommendation. For candidates who have not yet completed their Ph.D. at the time of application, one of these letters must be from the chair of the dissertation committee addressing the likelihood of completion by the starting date of the fellowship. Candidates must also submit samples of their scholarly writing. For applicants who have not completed their dissertation, this should include all completed dissertation chapters. The application deadline is February 15, 2010. Applications should be sent to: Dr. Richard T. Rodriguez, Post-Doctoral Fellowship Review Committee, Latina/Latino Studies Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 510 East Chalmers, Champaign, IL 61820. Current Postdoctoral Fellowship Faculty For further information about the fellowship, contact the Latina/Latino Studies Program at (217) 265-0370. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Call for Division Nominations We are currently soliciting nominations for the position of Co-Chair for the Health, Health Services and Health Policy Division. Co-Chairs serve overlapping two year terms, and are jointly responsible for: developing the Division program (identifying sessions and organizers) for the annual meeting; running the Division business meeting at the annual meeting; working with the newsletter editor to assure publication of the annual newsletter; and other Division business. If you are interested in learning more or in nominating yourself or another individual for this rewarding position, please contact Edna A. Viruell-Fuentes at eviruell@illinois.edu for further information. Information about Division Elections: Chairpersons are elected for two years. No Division Chairperson can serve for more than three consecutive years. Self nominations are acceptable. If you are nominated, the Executive Office will contact you to request your biographical information and statement prior to the elections. Names of nominees must be submitted to the Executive Office no later than June 1, so please contact us soon if you wish to nominate someone, or to nominate yourself. The election process is handled by the Executive Office. Election procedures will insure to all members of the Division an opportunity to vote in the election. A majority of votes cast will be necessary to elect any Division Officer. If there are more nominees for an office and there is not a clear majority, a run-off election will be held between the two candidates receiving the most votes. The same election procedures described above will be followed for the run-off election.