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Over the last two decades of long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the media's attention on military veterans in the UK has been characterized by a series of shifts: from a focus on combat operations; to initiatives to support transition to civilian life; and finally to a largely invisible presence of veteran issues in the mediated public sphere. This article presents findings from an online qualitative survey conducted with British veterans in 2020. The authors' primary focus is on how veterans express their concerns when asked about varied televised representations of military and post-military experience. How did the respondents perceive differences across television genres (drama, news, reality TV), and how did this affect their engagement? How do they see their veteran identity reflected back at them through popular media culture? There is a growing research interest in 'veteran studies' from a range of disciplines, but the relationship between veteran identity and perceptions of (post)-military representations remains largely under-researched, at least in the UK context. One concern is that negative or misleading stereotypes of veterans among publics could hinder their successful reintegration into society, but the authors are interested in how veterans make sense of such representations across popular media culture, how they imagine the 'general public' audience in their reflections, and the nature of veteran identity they project within the survey responses. This study finds that anxieties about 'mad, bad or sad' stereotypical representations of veterans continue, but the diversity within its findings also reaffirms the importance of not treating veterans as a homogeneous group in research.

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