Ranging from a historical look at eugenics to an ethnographic description of parents receiving the news that their child has Downs syndrome, from analyses of inequalities in the delivery of health services to an examination of the meaning of race in genomics research, and from a meditation on the loneliness of the long-term caregiver to a reflection on what children owe their elderly parents, this volume explores heath and illness. Social and Cultural Contributions to Health, Difference, and Inequality brings seventeen pieces new to this edition of The Social Medicine Reader together with five classic pieces that appeared in the first edition. It focuses on how difference and disability are defined and experienced in contemporary America, how the social categories commonly used to predict disease outcomes—such as gender, race and ethnicity, and social class—have become contested terrain, and why some groups have more limited access to healthcare services than others.
