Comrades in Health: U.S. Health Internationalists, Abroad and at Home (Critical Issues in Health and Medicine (Paperback))

Comrades in Health: U.S. Health Internationalists, Abroad and at Home (Critical Issues in Health and Medicine (Paperback))

by Michael Terry (Contributor), Bernard Lown (Contributor), Alicia Ely Yamin (Contributor), Michael Terry (Contributor), Alicia Ely Yamin (Contributor), Bernard Lown (Contributor), Mary Travis Bassett (Contributor), Anne-Emanuelle Birn (Editor), Wendy Johnson (Contributor), Brea Bondi-Boyd (Contributor), H. Jack Geiger (Contributor), Howard Waitzkin (Contributor), James Pfeiffer (Contributor), Jane Pacht Brickman (Contributor), Jennifer Kasper (Contributor), Lanny Smith (Contributor), Laura Turiano (Contributor), Paula Braveman (Contributor), Razel Remen (Contributor), Ruth Sidel (Contributor), Seiji Yamada (Contributor), Stephen Gloyd (Contributor), Susan Gross Solomon (Contributor), Theodore M. Brown (Contributor), Timothy Holtz (Contributor), Vicente Navarro (Foreword), Victor W. Sidel (Contributor), Walter J. Lear (Contributor)

Synopsis

Since the early twentieth century, politically engaged and socially committed U.S. health professionals have worked in solidarity with progressive movements around the world. Often with roots in social medicine, political activism, and international socialism, these doctors, nurses, and other health workers became comrades who joined forces with people struggling for social justice, equity, and the right to health. Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Theodore M. Brown bring together a group of professionals and activists whose lives have been dedicated to health internationalism. By presenting a combination of historical accounts and first-hand reflections, this collection of essays aims to draw attention to the longstanding international activities of the American health left and the lessons they brought home. The involvement of these progressive U.S. health professionals is presented against the background of foreign and domestic policy, social movements, and global politics.

$53.16

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 350
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 01 Jul 2013

ISBN 10: 0813561205
ISBN 13: 9780813561202

Media Reviews
Comrades in Health is a pioneering effort, a major addition to the study of global public health, and a new perspective on U.S. domestic health policy. --Gerald M. Oppenheimer coauthor of Shattered Dreams? An Oral History of the South African AIDS Epidemic
Birn and Brown describe the history of international efforts to improve the health of vulnerable populations as an inherently sociopolitical, leftist, and often communist, endeavor. [The editors] create a coherent picture of the development of international health efforts...and will be an interesting read for more advanced students of public health and political science. Recommended.
--Choice
Comrades in Health is important reading for those interested in the global debate surrounding the post-2015 global developmental agenda and future reform of the UN-centric humanitarian system required to address 21st-century human security and social justice. --Canadian Bulletin of Medical History
The most haunting lesson in this fine book stems from its call for an ethic of social consciousness in health care work. In this view, the struggle of justice for all is integral to the improvement of individual health outcomes, and it is as fraught with uncertainty and unintended consequences as is the treatment of individual illness. Birn, Brown and their colleagues update an old social medicine lesson that makes this struggle, with its risks, penuries and triumphs, a core professional duty instead of merely a morally praiseworthy individual pursuit.
--Global Public Health
Perhaps the most interesting lesson in Comrades in Health is in showing how the very term socialised medicine came to be such an imagined existential threat to the US body politic. --Lancet