http://www.baywood.com/books/previewbook.asp?id=0-89503-279-1

This new book is an extremely important compilation of papers that get
directly to the root of what the social determinants of health are about.
It can be seen as a companion piece to the earlier "The Political Economy
of Social Inequalities: Consequences for Health and Quality of Life",
Edited by Vicente Navarro [
http://www.baywood.com/books/previewbook.asp?id=0-89503-252-x ]

Political and Economic Determinants of Population Health and Well-Being:
Controversies and Developments
Edited by Vicente Navarro and Carles Muntaner
Policy, Politics, Health and Medicine Series, Vicente Navarro, Series
Editor

IN PRAISE OF
"Political and Economic Determinants of Population Health and Well-Being is
a superb compendium of
research and debate on a question of fundamental importance—the
relationship between social
inequality and human well-being. It should convince all serious scholars
that the study of class, race,
gender, and other forms of inequality should be at the center of the agenda
of public health research
in the 21st century."
—Erik Olin Wright, Vilas Distinguished Professor, University of Wisconsin

"This remarkable collection explores, from many perspectives, some of the
most crucial problems of
social policy of the coming years, not least in the United States. These
penetrating essays range from
theoretical and analytic dissection of fundamental moral, political, and
economic issues to close
investigation of a wide variety of critically important cases. For those
concerned about what lies
ahead—and what we can and should do about it—the collection is not only
valuable but
indispensable."
—Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus, MIT

"It was fascinating for me to go through this mine of information,
analysis, and interpretation; to find
a rigorous academic documentation interlaced with rejections of injustice;
to understand how often the
health effects of class, gender, race, and social background are concealed;
to see the extent to which
conservative assumptions are contradicted by strong evidence; to verify the
positive health effects of
the work of labor unions; to see how many groups defend health as a public
good; and to gain so
many ideas and insights for research and for action.

Last year, the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO declared:
‘Health has a double moral
value, because it is essential for the quality of life and for life itself,
and is instrumental as a
condition for freedom. The inequality between rich and poor—at the level of
individuals, communities,
and nations—is increasingly deeply felt in the area of health and
healthcare, thereby contributing to
the desperation and injustice that prevail and continue to increase in
other h ealth-related fields such
as food, income, and education.’ This book provides the best analysis of
these conditions, the
broadest description of the realities in the United States and worldwide,
and the stimulus for further
research and action."
—Giovanni Berlinguer, University of Rome, Italy

ABOUT THE BOOK
The field of social inequalities in health continues its vigorous growth in
the early years of the 21st
century. This volume, following in the footsteps of Vicente Navarro’s
edited collection The Political
Economy of Social Inequalities, is a compilation of recent contributions to
the areas of social
epidemiology, health disparities, health economics, and health services
research. The overarching
theme is to describe and explain the ever-growing health inequalities
across social class, race, and
gender, as well as neighborhood, city, region, country, and continent. The
approach of this book is
distinctly multi-, trans-, and interdisciplinary: the fields of public
health, population health,
epidemiology, economics, sociology, political science, philosophy,
medicine, and history are all
represented here.

Part I, on social policy, includes Navarro’s critique of Sen’s influential
Development As Freedom, Sen’s
own analysis of gender and development, a comparison of the consequences of
Swedish and British
labor market policies, and several analyses of the evolution of
international economic inequalities.

Part II centers on the contested concept of globalization, with an
international empirical analysis of its
consequences for global well-being over the last two decades, a description
of growing health
inequalities by income in the United States since the 1960s, and an account
of the expansion of
managed care in semiperipheral countries.

 Part III, on health policy, presents a critique of a
controversial 2000 WHO report and two analyses of contemporary U.S. health
policy. Part IV, on
health care, provides international empirical evidence on the negative
effects of privatization, in
particular in hospitals, nursing homes, and health services utilization.
Part V focuses on occupational
health and labor unions, including the crucial role of unions in protecting
worker’s safety and health.
One chapter tells the story of New York’s legendary SEIU 1199; another
addresses the neglected area
of women’s occupational health; another provides dramatic case studies on
violations of workers’
freedom of association and their consequences.

Part VI, on social capital versus class, gender, and
race, deals with one of the most heated theoretical and empirical debates
in contemporary social
epidemiology. Most of the contributors provide arguments and data that
challenge communitarian
approaches to health disparities, focusing instead on political factors,
welfare state provisions, and
class, race, and gender inequalities as major sources of inequalities in
health.

 Finally, Part VII
addresses the role of ideology, theory, and research policy in the
production and maintenance of
social inequalities in health. Ideology is not usually seen as a social
determinant of population
health, but the contributors here show the role of ideology in shaping
scientific views about race and
health disparities, as well as the implicit understanding of determinants
of health and disease. The
final chapter presents a critical overview of recent ideological attempts
at discrediting empirical
research on health disparities and social epidemiology.

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