Martin Halliwell 
American Health Crisis [PDF ebook] 
One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics

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.

Tabella dei contenuti

Preface 


Introduction 1918: Woodrow Wilson, Crisis, and the Arc of Public Health 


Part 1: Geographies of Vulnerability: Environmental Health Crises

1. Disaster: Mississippi Flood, Buffalo Creek, Hurricane Katrina

2. Poverty: Dust Bowl, Urban Ghetto, Indian Reservation

3. Pollution: Nuclear Fallout, Water Contamination, Climate Change


Part 2: States of Vulnerability: Crises of Prevention and Treatment

4. Virus: Influenza, Polio, HIV/AIDS 

5. Care: Postwar Hospitals, Community Action, Vet Centers

6. Drugs: Methadone, Diazepam, Fentanyl


Conclusion 2018: Obama, Trump, and the Future of Health Citizenship

Coda 2020


Acknowledgments

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Circa l’autore

Martin Halliwell is Professor of American Studies at the University of Leicester. He has authored and edited fourteen books, including Therapeutic Revolutions: Medicine, Psychiatry, and American Culture, 1945–1970; Voices of Mental Health: Medicine, Politics, and American Culture, 1970–2000; and The Edinburgh Companion to the Politics of American Health.