SubjectsMedicine and Health > Medical Humanities, Sociology The extensively updated and revised third edition of the bestselling Social Medicine Reader provides a survey of the challenging issues facing today's health care providers, patients, and caregivers by bringing together moving narratives of illness, commentaries by physicians, debates about complex medical cases, and conceptually and empirically based writings by scholars in medicine, the social sciences, and the humanities. Volume 2, Differences and Inequalities, explores the fundamental sociocultural, socioeconomic, and racial dimensions that shape health differences and inequalities. These include social and cultural influences on the meanings of health, illness, and disease; social factors in the development of biomedical knowledge and systems of care; and structural explanations for why some social groups experience disproportionate burdens of disease and differences in treatment. The Reader is essential reading for all medical students, physicians, and health care providers.
"A must-read for health care professionals, these readings are provocative and invite critical social and moral analysis among health care professionals. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty." — B. A. D'Anna, Choice “This collection offers a terrific introduction to the social science and humanities foundations needed for effective health care and medicine. Served up in compelling bite-size pieces suitable for health science students, this collection nevertheless remains uncompromising in its refusal of easy solutions and quick fixes on disability, the racialization of care, the structural determinants of health, and much more.” — Vincanne Adams, editor of Medical Anthropology Quarterly“The new third edition of The Social Medicine Reader is absolutely essential reading for those who seek to understand the core issues that determine health, disease, and medical care in our current times. The essays collected here direct critical attention to the social forces that produce disease or protect health, the meanings of disease and their impact on patients, and the complex ethical and political issues confronting patients and providers. This is a must-read for anyone interested in disparities in health, access to quality of care, and justice in our ability to effectively and compassionately address the needs of patients and populations.” — Allan M. Brandt, Harvard University “This collection offers a terrific introduction to the social science and humanities foundations needed for effective health care and medicine. Served up in compelling bite-size pieces suitable for health science students, this collection nevertheless remains uncompromising in its refusal of easy solutions and quick fixes on disability, the racialization of care, the structural determinants of health, and much more.” — Vincanne Adams, editor of Medical Anthropology Quarterly“The new third edition of The Social Medicine Reader is absolutely essential reading for those who seek to understand the core issues that determine health, disease, and medical care in our current times. The essays collected here direct critical attention to the social forces that produce disease or protect health, the meanings of disease and their impact on patients, and the complex ethical and political issues confronting patients and providers. This is a must-read for anyone interested in disparities in health, access to quality of care, and justice in our ability to effectively and compassionately address the needs of patients and populations.” — Allan M. Brandt, Harvard University