Search results

AbstractCOVID‐19 public health messages largely communicated that Americans were "safer at home." Implicit in this advice are messages about protections ostensibly also offered by monogamy–that having more relationships is always more dangerous than having fewer relationships and that closer relationships are always safer–from a disease transmission perspective–than unfamiliar relationships. These heuristics may have led people to discount other COVID‐19 dangers (such as spending more time with others of unknown infection status) and to ignore COVID‐specific safety measures (such as mask‐wearing, and ventilation). We conducted three studies in which we used experimental vignettes to assess people's perceptions of COVID‐risky targets in monogamous relationships with a close, committed partner versus targets who were described as non‐monogamous with casual partners but relatively COVID‐safe. Participants perceived monogamous‐but‐COVID‐riskier targets as more responsible and safer from COVID‐19. Non‐monogamy stigma seems to extend analogously to COVID‐19 risk. Public health messages that fail to attend to the specifics and nuances of close relationships risk contributing to this stigma and ultimately undermining the goals of reducing the spread of infectious disease.

Frontmatter --Contents --Notes on Contributors --Introduction: The Political Landscapes of American Health, 1945-2020 --Part I: Geography, Community and American Health --Introduction --1 Health and Inequality in the Postwar Metropolis --2 Poverty, Health and Health Care in Rural Communities --3 The Politics of Immigration Meets the Politics of Health Care --4 Latinxs and the US Health Care System --5 American Indian Health: The Medicine Wheel versus the Iron Triangle --Part II: Critical Health Conditions: Debates and Histories --Introduction --6 The Politics of Polio Vaccination in Postwar America, 1950-60: Detractors and Defenders --7 Beyond the Cancer Wars --8 A System in Crisis: US Health Care Politics and the AIDS Epidemic --9 The Politics of 'Obesity': Medicalization, Stigmatization and Liberation of Fat Bodies --10 Revising Diagnoses, Reinventing Psychiatry: DSM and Major Depressive Disorder --Part III: The Politics of Children's Health --Introduction --11 US Children's Health Insurance: Policy Advocacy and Ideological Conflict --12 Autism and the Anti-Vaccine Movement --13 Diagnosing Deficit, Promising Enhancement: ADHD and Stimulants on Screen --14 On the Possibility of Affirmative Health Care for Transgender Children --15 Black Infant Mortality: Continuities, Contestations and Care --Part IV: The Institutional Matrix of Health Care --Introduction --16 The Regional and Racial Politics of Postwar Hospitals --17 Health Activism in the 1960s and the Community Health Center System --18 The Veterans Administration and PTSD: Challenges and Changes from Vietnam to Iraq --19 The Pharmaceutical Industry, Drug Regulation and US Health Services --20 The National Institutes of Health: Courting Congress, Creating a Research Infrastructure --Part V: The White House, Congress and Health Reform --Introduction --21 Left Out: Health Security and the American Welfare State, 1935-50 --22 Medicare and Medicaid after the Great Society: Containing Costs, Expanding Coverage --23 Mental Health, Stigma and Federal Reform in the 1970s and 1990s --24 The War on Drugs: Nixon, Reagan, Trump --25 Obamacare and Its Critics --Part VI: Justice, Ethics and American Health --Introduction --26 Roe v. Wade and the Cultural Politics of Abortion: The Shift from Rights to Health --27 Genetics, Health and the Making of America's Triracial Isolates, 1950-80 --28 The Rhetoric and Politics of American Ageism: Notes from a Pandemic --29 Towards a Structural Competency Framework for Addressing US Gun Violence --30 Mass Incarceration and Health Inequity in the United States --Part VII: Public Health and Global Health --Introduction --31 Occupational and Environmental Health in Twentieth-Century America --32 Environmental Health beyond the State: Thinking through the 1970s --33 Bioterrorism, Pandemic and the American Public --34 Health Internationalism in the US and Beyond --35 Pandemics and the Politics of Planetary Health --Bibliography --Index

Examines the diverse, and often conflicted, political status of health in the United States from World War II to Covid-19Explores the histories, cultures, policies and technologies of American health and medicine as they have developed over a 75-year periodBrings together 45 experts from the US, Canada and the UK working across the fields of medicine, health policy, political and social history, political science, environmental studies, law, and cultural studiesUses the lenses of class, poverty, race, gender, sexuality and locality to study the concepts, policies and lived realities of U.S. healthcare and medical treatmentExplores key controversies in American health, including global health and new technologiesBy emphasising the plurality of health experiences, and balancing national and transnational perspectives with the lived realities of diverse communities, this groundbreaking collection expands far beyond biomedical conceptions of health. Together, the contributors take a multi-layered view of the politics of US healthcare by examining it from historical, cultural, medical, sociological, legal, ethical and environmental perspectives. Chapters consider major health institutions and the federal policies that guide them; the intersection between health and social movements; the contours of health and illness with respect to race, gender, sexuality, age and region; and the US's often-conflicted role in global health governance