With thorough coverage of inequality in health care access and practice across the field it surveys, The Sociology of Health, Healing, and Illness is widely acclaimed by instructors as the most comprehensive of any available. Written in an engaging and accessible style, with multiple student-friendly features, it integrates and contextualizes recent research in medical sociology and public health to introduce students to a wide range of issues affecting health, healing, and health care today.
This new edition links information on COVID-19 into each chapter, providing students with timely and familiar examples to deepen their understanding of the many social dimensions of health care, such as the social history of medicine, social epidemiology, social stress, health and illness behavior, the medical profession, nurses and allied health workers, complementary and alternative medicine, the physician-patient relationship, medical ethics, and the financing and organization of medical care.
Important changes and enhancements to this eleventh edition include:
- A heightened focus on social disparities in race, class, gender, and sexual identity, addressing how these differences impact health outcomes in the United States and why
- Updates to the boxed sections that explore topics "In the Field" and "In Comparative Focus," sparking readers' curiosity and drawing their attention to topics such as medical education and student debt, as well as the continuities and differences in health care and public health issues across time and space
- Thorough examination of newer perspectives and developments in the field, including the issue of nurse and physician burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic, quality concerns in nursing homes, and the inner workings of health care systems in other parts of the world
- Improved support materials for instructors, featuring updated exam questions and lecture slides that correspond to the book's newer content
Altogether, the new edition of The Sociology of Health, Healing, and Illness maintains the foundational coverage of the field that the book is well known for and enriches its presentation with considered attention to contemporary patterns, perspectives, and research - perfect for introducing readers to the important and tremendously meaningful issues studied by medical sociologists.
Denise A. Copelton, PhD, is Professor of Sociology and Department Chair at The State University of New York (SUNY) at Brockport. One of the first social scientists to study celiac disease and gluten-free eating, her work has been published in Social Science & Medicine, Sociology of Health & Illness, Advances in Gender Research, and Deviant Behavior, among other outlets. She is co-author (with Amy Guptill and Betsy Lucal) of Food & Society: Principles and Paradoxes, now in its third edition. She regularly teaches courses on introductory sociology, sociology of health and illness, sociology of families, and aging and the life course. Her college-wide leadership was recognized in 2019 with the prestigious SUNY Chancellor's Award for Faculty Service.
Gregory L. Weiss earned his PhD from Purdue University and is now Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Roanoke College. During his career, he has been an honored teacher (winning numerous college, statewide, regional [SSS], and national [ASA's Section on Teaching and Learning] awards), a dedicated researcher and writer (author of Grass Roots Medicine and co-author of Experiencing Social Research and the ASA publication on Creating an Effective Sociology Assessment Program as well as dozens of scholarly articles), and active in the community in a variety of health-, environmental-, and animal-related organizations.
