Advances in Medical Sociology – serie

A study of social assumptions, specific events, medical categories, distinct groups and ideas of control in health research. This book examines presumptions about gender, race and age with particular reference to the "biological clock" and notions of "civilized countries" and "primitive races". The volume is divided into three sections. The first section spells out the author's new theory of medicalism - a co-emergent process of health care which puts health-care consumers on an equal causal footing with health-care providers. The second section takes up each of the issues of age, sex and race in turn and looks at the particular consequences of these assumptions for specific health events. With age, fertility is the focus. With sex and race, the focus is on cancer. The third section deals with action both in terms of doing better research and making informed choices about health care.

This volume is directed toward researchers and health professionals with an interest in the interstices of social networks and health. It consists of original papers that address critical themes in health-related social network research and disease prevention. The sections discuss the dynamics of social networks and their role in providing social support under varying conditions and contexts; how social network theory and research contribute to disease prevention and control; methodological issues that affect recall and agreement when conducting social network studies; how social networks structure and facilitate or discourage health risk; and the role of network ties in disease prevention. The volume concludes by examining the influence of social support in health promotion, symptom identification and disease management.

This volume deals with the topic of health inequalities and health disparities. The volume is divided into five sections. The first section includes an introductory look at the issue of health care inequalities and disparities and also an introduction to the volume. One of the backdrops to this topic in the United States was The National Healthcare Disparities Report and its focus on the ability of Americans to access health care and variation in the quality of care. Disparities related to socioeconomic status were included, as were disparities linked to race and ethnicity and the report also tried to explore the relationship between race/ethnicity and socioeconomic position, as explained in more detail in the first article in the book.The second article discusses a newer overall approach to issues related to health inequalities and health disparities. The remaining four sections of the book address more specific topics relating to inequalities and disparities. The second section examines racial and ethnic inequalities and disparities. The third section includes articles that address the issue from the perspective of research about health care providers and health care facilities. The last two sections of the book focus on consumers and topics of health care disparities, with Section 4 focused on issues related to substance abuse, mental health and related concerns.Section 5 includes articles looking at issues of vulnerable women, women with breast cancer and people with colorectal cancer. "Inequalities and Disparities in Health Care and Health" is important reading for medical sociologists and people working in other social science disciplines studying health-related issues. The volume also provides vital information for health services researchers, policy analysts and public health researchers. It is a great resource for health services researchers, policy analysts and public health researchers. It offers an in-depth look at bioethics, focusing on health inequalities and disparities.

Diagnosis is central to medical practice, medical knowledge and research, medicalization dynamics, and health and illness experience. Embedded in social relations, diagnoses reflect and shape social dynamics and cultural concerns. Diagnoses are integral to resource allocation, form the basis for identities, and may become a focal point of turf battles and contested authority. Some diagnoses are willingly embraced, whereas others are strenuously resisted. Some diagnoses come and go as fashions; others persist. A sociological approach to diagnosis therefore occupies a complex intersection of diverse subfields including medical sociology, sociology of knowledge, mental health, deviance, social control, sociology of science, social movements, the body, sexualities, gender, and health and illness. This volume explores the breadth of diagnosis and diagnoses through empirical reports, conceptual work, and theoretical statements from diverse perspectives. Reflecting the multi-faceted nature of the emerging field, the book is arranged in five sections: Frameworks, Context, Contestation, Identity, and Social Control. Sociology of Diagnosis thus provides both a starting point for discussion and means with which to organize the nascent conceptual landscape.

This is the sixth volume in a series dedicated to publishing current research and conceptual papers in the broad ranging area of the sociology of health.

This volume addresses the need for sociological insight through empirically rich, theoretically innovative chapters that range across methods, traditions and foci in order to cast new light on the place, role and impact of neuroscience.

Our understandings of addiction are rapidly changing. New technologies and biomedical treatments are reconfiguring addiction as a brain disease, and the concept of "addiction" is expanding to cover an ever widening array of substances and behaviours, from food to shopping. This volume looks critically at how addiction has been framed historically, how it is characterized and understood through contemporary cultural representations, how new treatments and technologies are reconfiguring addiction, and how "addiction" is being expanded beyond illicit drugs and alcohol to explain phenomena such as "excessive" eating and gambling and the exponential rise in prescription narcotic use. It also examines how medical, behavioural and punitive frameworks come together to shape and control "addicts." Featuring the work of several up-and-coming scholars working to deepen theoretical perspectives on addiction and its relationship to social control and deviance, this volume fills a gap in addiction studies by offering critical perspectives that interrogate and challenge traditional and/or mainstream understandings of addiction.

Drawing on ecosystem thinking, complexity and postnormal science, Ecological Health offers a radical new way of thinking about the health issues of the 21st Century. This volume reflects on recent social scientific engagement with Ecosystem Health research and practice and sets out a vision for the future. While significant links between human health and the environment are increasingly evident, how to make sense of the interdependence of human health on natural systems is posing significant challenges. Ecological health is a new approach used by medics, public health practitioners, veterinarians, as well as social and natural scientists who study health at the nexus between human, animal and ecological systems. This volume is a reference tool offering a sociological analysis of the interrelationship between society, earth systems and health as conceptual frameworks. The authors provide methodological tools for conducting social science research that integrates social, natural and medical systems. It will appeal to a broad audience of researchers and practitioners who currently work in the arena of ecology and health and as well as those interested in expanding their research.

This volume focuses on critical issues surrounding the intersection of genetics, health, and society. It provides a critical examination of sociological and biomedical approaches to genomics, including strengths and limitations of each perspective.

Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s, a revolution in mental health policy and practice known as deinstitutionalization occurred in Europe and the US. This movement was catalyzed by criticisms of psychiatric institutions and resulted in the release of thousands of people with serious mental illness from long-term care facilities into the community. It is acknowledged that these reforms held great promise, but have had numerous unintended negative consequences. Moreover, deinstitutionalization has strained the resources and reach of community-based mental health treatment systems, spilling into other institutions such as criminal justice and education. Volume 17 of Advances in Medical Sociology will examine deinstitutionalization’s legacies approximately 50 years after reintegration began, turning a critical lens toward contemporary problems and solutions related to mental illness in countries where reform occurred. This volume will highlight pressing issues around mental health treatment, social and health policy, and the lived experiences of people and families coping with mental illness that were or continue to be significantly influenced by deinstitutionalization reforms.

In recent years, the ways in which food is produced, distributed, and consumed have emerged as prominent health and social issues. With rising concern about rates of obesity, food systems have attracted the attention of state actors, leading to both innovative and controversial public health interventions, such as citywide soda bans, “veggie prescription” initiatives, and farm-to-school programs. At the same time, social movement activism has emerged focused on issues related to food and health, including movements for food justice, food safety, farm worker’s rights, and community control of land for agricultural production. Meanwhile, many individuals and families struggle to obtain food that is affordable, accessible, and meaningfully connected to their cultures. Volume 18 of Advances in Medical Sociology brings cutting-edge sociological research to bear on these multiple dimensions of food systems and their impacts on individual and population health. This volume will highlight how food systems matter for health policy, health politics, and the lived experiences and life chances of individuals and communities.

The current politicized climate around immigration includes heated debate over the potential costs of continued immigration for the health and well-being of the nation. Amid the controversy one pattern that has escaped significant notice is that immigrants today are healthier than the native-born. Even more striking is that these positive health profiles are found among those immigrants who tend to have less education and lower income, factors that population health researchers have typically associated with poor health. A final feature of contemporary immigrant health is evidence of a gradual loss of the immigrant health advantage with time in the U.S. and across generations.  These paradoxical patterns lie at the center of Volume 19 of Advances in Medical Sociology. Too often, immigrant health is set apart and treated as a specialty research area rather than as a topic that is central to understanding such core sociological concepts as stratification and inequality. The contributors in this volume all leverage a population health perspective to help unravel the patterns and paradoxes of immigrant health, and in doing so, help to clarify more broadly how health dis-parities emerge and persist in the contemporary U.S.

At a moment when reproduction is increasingly politicized, this volume explores the breadth of contemporary research on reproduction from the perspective of medical sociology, illuminating the lived experience of reproduction and offering insights to inform sociology and health policy. Reproduction, Health, and Medicine elucidates the tensions and contradictions between the normal physiologic processes of pregnancy and birth and the sociocultural beliefs, values, and arrangements that shape how we experience these biological phenomena. Investigating a range of reproductive events and experiences, including pregnancy, birth, abortion and fertility planning, the volume advances our understanding of how lay people and professionals make cultural meaning out of these processes in diverse settings. The chapters highlight how studies of reproduction, health, and medicine interface with core sociological concepts such as stratification, inequality, intersectionality, family and kinship, risk, and social control, and how experiences of reproduction are shaped by gender, race, class, sexuality and citizenship, as well as culture, health care systems, and health politics.

Research concerning sexual and gender minority (SGM) health has flourished in recent years in conjunction with a period of intense social, political, and legal discourse about SGM persons. While this attention has increased understanding and recognition of SGM experiences, recent advances have often been met with resistance and backlash rooted in social stigma and long histories of discrimination.This volume of Advances in Medical Sociology showcases rich theoretical and empirical contributions on SGM health and wellbeing. The chapters address a variety of topics, drawing from classic and contemporary sociological frameworks and constructs, and reflecting intersecting interdisciplinary approaches to SGM health. Research presented in this volume provides an in-depth focus on sexual and/or gender minority populations, as well as the diverse sub-populations within them; theoretical and empirical explanations for SGM health disparities and resilience; aging and life course perspectives on the health experiences of SGM persons; health in the context of critical relationships in the lives of SGM persons; and the experiences of seeking general and specialized health care among SGM. The time is ripe for deeper examinations of the social determinants of SGM health, and this volume seeks to begin filling existing gaps in the literature.

This volume focuses on the contributions that social scientists can make to understanding emerging epidemics, their impact, the threats they pose, and their social and political contexts. While many of the international articles focus on infectious disease, some discussion is given to treating psychiatric epidemics and the analysis of the political and cultural meanings that epidemics have. A sociological volume on emerging epidemics, covering psychiatric or psychological diseases as well as infectious disease is long overdue and topics included here are as wide ranging as: bipolar disorder; obesity; malaria; HIV/AIDS; SARS; West Nile Virus; pandemic influenzas; deviance; depression; ADHD; Alzheimer's; and autism. This valuable reference tool empirically examines emerging epidemics themselves and offers a theoretical analysis of the use of epidemics and epidemiology as frameworks for understanding these phenomena. It will appeal to a broad audience of readers of researchers and practitioners in this field, ranging from those involved in public health policy, human security and community health to medical sociologists and other scientists working in health and medicine.

Medical Sociology is among the largest and first subdisciplines in Sociology. It is an area of ongoing work, advancing theory, method and our substantive understanding of social life. This series brings together the newest issues and most current concerns in Medical Sociology, in an ongoing collection of edited volumes. Each volume is edited by a medical sociologist with a particular expertise, bringing together contributions from sociologists working in different settings and nations, exploring one particular advance in Medical Sociology.