Engaging the World on Health Equity Through ReadingMain MenuIntroductionWhy these books?Ailing in Place: Environmental Inequities and Health Disparities in AppalachiaMichele MorroneAmerican Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and PoliticsMartin HalliwellAmerica’s Arab Refugees: Vulnerability and Health on the MarginsMarcia C. InhornBedlam: An Intimate Journey into America's Mental Health CrisisKenneth Paul RosenbergBlack Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic PlagueDavid K RandallChanging Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about ItPaul R. Epstein (Author), Dan Ferber (Author), Jeffrey Sachs (Foreword)CherryNico WalkerDelugeLelia ChattiDying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and HealthKeith WailooA Family History of Illness: Memory as MedicineBrett L. WalkerThe Family Roe: An American StoryJoshua PragerFit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939Natalia MolinaHaiti: After the EarthquakePaul FarmerHow the Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food and Inequality in AmericaPriya Fielding-Singh, PhDMad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally IllRobert WhitakerNot Invisible: A Collection of Poems about Chronic IllnessTiffany MoharPushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol CigaretteKeith WailooSince the House is BurningTale of Two PlanetsJohn Freeman (editor)Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our NationLinda VillarosaUnwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made WorldElinor CleghornWhat Happens Is NeitherAngela Narciso TorresWhat the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American CityMona Hanna-AttishaWhich Country Has the World's Best Health Care?Ezekiel J. EmanuelAbout the curatorAcknowledgementsVesper North9c258319e12f98ebd7884dfac94793204ec38858Chapman University
Cover art for "American Health Crisis"
1media/American Health Crisis_thumb.jpeg2023-08-09T18:18:16+00:00Vesper North9c258319e12f98ebd7884dfac94793204ec388583101Image courtesy of the University of California Pressplain2023-08-09T18:18:16+00:00Vesper North9c258319e12f98ebd7884dfac94793204ec38858
keywords: history of healthcare, United States, disease, environmental effects
A history of U.S. public health emergencies and how we can turn the tide.
Despite enormous advances in medical science and public health education over the last century, access to health care remains a dominant issue in American life. U.S. health care is often hailed as the best in the world, yet the public health emergencies of today often echo the public health emergencies of yesterday: consider the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 and COVID-19, the displacement of the Dust Bowl and the havoc of Hurricane Maria, the Reagan administration’s antipathy toward the AIDS epidemic and the lack of accountability during the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
Spanning the period from the presidency of Woodrow Wilson to that of Donald Trump, American Health Crisis illuminates how—despite the elevation of health care as a human right throughout the world—vulnerable communities in the United States continue to be victimized by structural inequalities across disparate geographies, income levels, and ethnic groups. Martin Halliwell views contemporary public health crises through the lens of historical and cultural revisionings, suturing individual events together into a narrative of calamity that has brought us to our current crisis in health politics. American Health Crisis considers the future of public health in the United States and, presenting a reinvigorated concept of health citizenship, argues that now is the moment to act for lasting change.