This book considers the change in rhetoric surrounding the treatment of AIDS from one of crisis to that of ‘ending AIDS’. Exploring what it means to ‘end AIDS’ and how responsibility is framed in this new discourse, the author considers the tensions generated between the individual and the state in terms of notions such as risk, responsibility and prevention. Based on analyses public health promotions in the UK and the US, HIV prevention science and engaging with the work of Foucault, this volume argues that the discourse of ‘ending AIDS’ implies a tension-filled space in which global principles and values may clash with localised needs, values and concerns; in which evidence-based policies strive for hegemony over local, tacit and communal regimes of knowledge; and in which desires compete with national and international ideas about what is best for the individual in the name of ‘ending AIDS’ writ large. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and media studies with interests in the sociology of medicine and health, medical communication and health policy.

This book explores the thoroughly human dimension of the health care and prevention responses to the HIV crisis in the UK, and the impact that such initiatives had on the progression of the epidemic. This book presents a compelling account of the unfolding of the epidemic and the initiatives that made all the difference in the care and prevention of HIV in the UK from the early 1980s to the present time. Drawing on interviews with people with HIV, doctors and nurses involved in their care, leaders of AIDS charities, activists, and politicians, it identifies and describes the models of care developed in response to the onset of the HIV epidemic, and its impact on NHS and voluntary organisations. It goes on to explore the political responses, the evolution of HIV stigma, and the personal impact of the early high mortality rates. Finally, it discusses recent organisational changes in the provision of care and prevention services. In doing so, this volume identifies the lessons learnt from the care and prevention of HIV, both in relation to HIV infection and other conditions, such as COVID-19, and discusses future challenges. This book will be of great value to those working in services dealing with HIV, charities, and Clinical Commissioning Groups and GP organisations, as well as social historians and medical sociologists.

Increasingly, pharmaceuticals are available as the solutions to a wide range of human health problems and health risks, minor and major. This book portrays how pharmaceutical use is, at once, a solution to, and a difficulty for, everyday life. Exploring lived experiences of people at different stages of the life course and from different countries around the world, this collection highlights the benefits as well as the challenges of using medicines on an everyday basis. It raises questions about the expectations associated with the use of medications, the uncertainty about a condition or about the duration of a medicine regimen for it, the need to negotiate the stigma associated with a condition or a type of medicine, the need to access and pay for medicines and the need to schedule medicine use appropriately, and the need to manage medicines’ effects and side effects. The chapters include original empirical research, literature review and theoretical analysis, and convey the sociological and phenomenological complexity of ‘living pharmaceutical lives’. This book is of interest to all those studying and researching social pharmacy and the sociology of health and illness.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429285912, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. This innovative book addresses the question of why increasing numbers of people are being diagnosed with autism since the 1990s. Providing an engaging account of competing and widely debated explanations, it investigates how these have led to differing interpretations of the same data. Crucially, the author argues that the increased use of autism diagnosis is due to medicalisation across the life course, whilst holding open the possibility that the rise may also be partly accounted for by modern-day environmental exposures, again, across the life course. A further focus of the book is not on whether autism itself is valid as a diagnostic category, but whether and how it is useful as a diagnostic category, and how the utility of the diagnosis has contributed to the rise. This serves to move beyond the question of whether diagnoses are 'real' or social constructions, and instead asks: who do diagnoses serve to benefit, and at what cost do they come? The book will appeal to clinicians and health professionals, as well as medical researchers, who are interested in a review of the data which demonstrates the rising use of autism as a diagnosis, and an analysis of the reasons why this has occurred. Providing theory through which to interpret the expanding application of the diagnosis and the broadening of autism as a concept, it will also be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, philosophy, psychiatry, psychology, social work, disability studies and childhood studies.

Drawing on anthropology, historical sociology and social-epidemiology, this multidisciplinary book investigates how pharmaceuticals are produced, distributed, prescribed, (and) consumed, and regulated in order to construct a comprehensive understanding of the issues that drive (medicine) pharmaceutical markets in the Global South today. Based on primary research conducted in Benin and Ghana, and additional data collected in Cambodia and the Ivory Coast, this volume uses artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) against malaria as a central case study. It highlights the influence of the countries colonial and post-colonial history on their models for state regulation, production, and distribution, explores the determining role transnational actors as well as industries from the North but also and increasingly from the South play in influencing local pharmaceutical markets and looks at the behaviour of health care professionals and individuals. Stepping back, the authors then unpick the pharmaceuticalization process and the multiple regulations at stake by looking at the workings of, and linkages between, (biomedical health) pharmaceutical systems, (representatives of companies) industries, actors in private distribution, and consumer practices. Providing a thorough comparative analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of different pharmaceutical systems, it is an important contribution to the literature on pharmaceutalization and the governance of medication. It is of interest to students, researchers and policy-makers interested in medical anthropology, the sociology of health and illness, global health, healthcare management and pharmacy.

In the context of a growing criticism on the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on physicians, scientists, or politicians, Conflict of Interest and Medicine offers a comprehensive analysis of the conflict of interest in medicine anchored in the social sciences, with perspectives from sociology, history, political science, and law. Based on in-depth empirical investigations conducted within different territories (France, the European Union, and the United States) the contributions analyze the development of conflict of interest as a social issue and how it impacts the production of medical knowledge and expertise, physicians’ work and their prescriptions, and also the framing of health crises and controversies. In doing so, they bring a new understanding of the transformations in the political economy of pharmaceutical knowledge, the politicization of public health risks, and the promotion of transparency in science and public life. Complementing the more normative and quantitative understandings of conflict of interest issues that dominate today, this book will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of areas including social studies of sciences and technology, sociology of health and illness, and political sociology and ethics. It will be also a valuable resource for health professionals, medical scientists, or regulators facing the question of corporate influence.

Weight stigma is so pervasive in our culture that it is often unnoticed, along with the harm that it causes. Health care is rife with anti-fat bias and discrimination against fat people, which compromises care and influences the training of new practitioners. This book explores how this happens and how we can change it. This interdisciplinary volume is grounded in a framework that challenges the dominant discourse that health in fat individuals must be improved through weight loss. The first part explores the negative impacts of bias, discrimination, and other harms by health care providers against fat individuals. The second part addresses how we can ‘fatten’ pedagogy for current and future health care providers, discussing how we can address anti-fat bias in education for health professionals and how alternative frameworks, such as Health at Every Size, can be successfully incorporated into training so that health outcomes for fat people improve. Examining what works and what fails in teaching health care providers to truly care for the health of fat individuals without further stigmatizing them or harming them, this book is for scholars and practitioners with an interest in fat studies and health education from a range of backgrounds, including medicine, nursing, social work, nutrition, physiotherapy, psychology, sociology, education and gender studies.

Exploring the mechanisms underlying performance comparisons, Performance Comparison and Organizational Service Provision investigates how such assessments shape hospitals’ service provision and medical professionals’ work. With a focus on U.S. health care, this study outlines how medical quality was defined and compared in the hospital sector from the late 19th century to the present. Developing a novel theoretical framework to investigate performance comparisons, several different forms of internal and external performance assessments are contrasted throughout this period. The transformative effects of these comparisons on hospitals’ relationships to patients, insurers, regulators, and staff are analyzed and their ramifications for current hospital care are explored. Drawing on this analysis, the book examines the controversial nature of these measures and the struggles among hospital managers, patients, physicians, and policy makers to determine hospital quality. Affording a deeper understanding of how performance comparisons influence organizational service provision, the book will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of fields including organization studies, accountability and evaluation, health care, and policy research as well as practitioners in hospital care and management.

This book provides a contemporary and comprehensive examination of cancer in everyday life, drawing on qualitative research with people living with cancer, their family members and health professionals. It explores the evolving and enduring affects of cancer for individuals, families and communities, with attention to the changing dynamics of survivorship, including social relations around waiting, uncertainty, hope, wilfulness, obligation, responsibility and healing. Challenging simplistic deployments of survivorship and drawing on contemporary and classical social theory, it critically examines survivorship through innovative qualitative methodologies including interviews, focus groups, participant produced photos and solicited diaries. In assembling this panoramic view of cancer in the twenty-first century, it also enlivens core debates in sociology, including questions around individual agency, subjectivity, temporality, normativity, resistance, affect and embodiment. A thoughtful account of cancer embedded in the undulations of the everyday, narrated by its subjects and those who informally and formally care for them, Survivorship: A Sociology of Cancer in Everyday Life outlines new ways of thinking about survivorship for sociologists, health and medical researchers and those working in cancer care settings.

Scandinavian societies have historically, and problematically, been understood as homogenous, when in fact they have a long history of ethnic and cultural pluralism due to colonialism and territorial conquest. Amid global tensions around border security and refugee crises, these powerful conversations with nineteen scholars about the past, present, and future of a region in transition capture the current cultural moment.