Medicine and Public Health at the End of Empire

The recent financial meltdown has brought notable changes to the global practice of health care �changes that have often escaped the American news media. Although Western managed-care corporations previously had strengthened their influence abroad, now many countries are considering new approaches to health care for their citizens. The untold story of how corporations have influenced global health care �and the impacts now in America as the system rapidly shifts �is Dr. Waitzkin "s subject in his provocative new book. We now live in a new era in which the prospects for more humane approaches to health care are taking root. Strengthening access and improving public health are at the heart of the many previously little-noted struggles and actions by individuals, groups, and whole nations to put control back in the hands of patients and practitioners, as Americans of many political stripes seem to universally seek. The impacts of these changes in the United States are considerable, and they are amply illustrated by Dr. Waitzkin as the United States attempts to reorient its own system of care.

Howard Waitzkin is Distinguished Professor at the University of New Mexico and a primary care practitioner in rural northern New Mexico. His work focuses on social conditions that lead to illness, unnecessary suffering, and early death. Dr. Waitzkin's books include The Second Sickness, The Politics of Medical Encounter and At the Front Lines of Medicine.