Rachel Kahn Best
Biographic Data
| ID | 252225 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rachel Kahn Best |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rachel Kahn |
| FAMILY NAME | Best |
| SIGNATURE | BEST R K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9372-1792 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 163 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
“I want to worry about it
Disputed and disfavored
Disease frames and their consequences for stigma and medical research funds
Illnesses are often understood as criminal acts, as medically treatable conditions, or through metaphors of battles and journeys. Theorists suggest that frames vary across diseases and over time in systematic ways, and that frames have concrete consequences for the distribution of resources. But data limitations have prevented scholars from testing these hypotheses. We combine word embeddings and regression analysis to examine four frames for 104…
The Stigma of Diseases
Why are some diseases more stigmatized than others? And, has disease stigma declined over time? Answers to these questions have been hampered by a lack of comparable, longitudinal data. Using word embedding methods, we analyze 4.7 million news articles to create new measures of stigma for 106 health conditions from 1980 to 2018. Using mixed-effects regressions, we find that behavioral health conditions and preventable diseases attract the stronge…
Creative confluence
How do six collaborators-a medical sociologist, two law professors, and three graduate students at different stages of their PhD programs-meld their disparate perspectives into one coherent essay memorializing Lauren Edelman, who brought them together for a multi-year study of judicial reasoning in federal disability discrimination cases and then left them, so suddenly and so young, to carry on without her
Legality with a Vengeance
The law and society community has argued for decades for an expansive understanding of what counts as "law." But a content analysis of articles published in the Law & Society Review from its 1966 founding to the present finds that since the 1970s, the law and society community has focused its attention on laws in which the state regulates behavior, and largely ignored laws in which the state distributes resources, goods, and services. Why did soc…
Logics of Redistribution
Social policy scholars disagree about which factors best predict U.S. welfare state generosity. We argue that this disagreement is an artifact of study designs. Researchers usually study either the totality of a state's social expenditures or one specific program. These approaches overlook the fact that individual social programs were born of different circumstances and serve different constituencies. Comparing state-level policies for Temporary …
When “Best Practices” Win, Employees Lose
This article provides a new account of employers' advantages over employees in federal employment discrimination cases. We analyze the effects of judicial deference , in which judges use institutionalized employment structures to infer nondiscrimination without scrutinizing those structures in any meaningful way. Using logistic regression to analyze a representative sample of judicial opinions in federal EEO cases during the first thirty‐five yea…
Contested Illnesses
Disease Politics and Medical Research Funding
In the 1980s and 1990s, single-disease interest groups emerged as an influential force in U.S. politics. This article explores their effects on federal medical research priority-setting. Previous studies of advocacy organizations' political effects focused narrowly on direct benefits for constituents. Using data on 53 diseases over 19 years, I find that in addition to securing direct benefits, advocacy organizations have aggregate effects and can…
Multiple Disadvantages
A rich theoretical literature describes the disadvantages facing plaintiffs who suffer multiple, or intersecting, axes of discrimination. This article extends extant literature by distinguishing two forms of intersectionality: demographic intersectionality, in which overlapping demographic characteristics produce disadvantages that are more than the sum of their parts, and claim intersectionality, in which plaintiffs who allege discrimination on …
Situation or Social Problem
Despite a strong interest in media coverage of social problems, sociologists have failed to examine when and why news outlets present issues as problems in need of public action within short time periods. Through content analysis of 475 newspaper articles and negative binomial regression, I show that coverage of homelessness varies in the extent to which it presents homelessness as a social problem. The fact that not all news coverage discusses s…
Multiple Disadvantages
A rich theoretical literature describes the disadvantages facing plaintiffs who suffer multiple, or intersecting, axes of discrimination. This article extends extant literature by distinguishing two forms of intersectionality: demographic intersectionality, in which overlapping demographic characteristics produce disadvantages that are more than the sum of their parts, and claim intersectionality, in which plaintiffs who allege discrimination on …
Disease Politics and Medical Research Funding
In the 1980s and 1990s, single-disease interest groups emerged as an influential force in U.S. politics. This article explores their effects on federal medical research priority-setting. Previous studies of advocacy organizations' political effects focused narrowly on direct benefits for constituents. Using data on 53 diseases over 19 years, I find that in addition to securing direct benefits, advocacy organizations have aggregate effects and can…
The Stigma of Diseases
Why are some diseases more stigmatized than others? And, has disease stigma declined over time? Answers to these questions have been hampered by a lack of comparable, longitudinal data. Using word embedding methods, we analyze 4.7 million news articles to create new measures of stigma for 106 health conditions from 1980 to 2018. Using mixed-effects regressions, we find that behavioral health conditions and preventable diseases attract the stronge…
Situation or Social Problem
Despite a strong interest in media coverage of social problems, sociologists have failed to examine when and why news outlets present issues as problems in need of public action within short time periods. Through content analysis of 475 newspaper articles and negative binomial regression, I show that coverage of homelessness varies in the extent to which it presents homelessness as a social problem. The fact that not all news coverage discusses s…
Logics of Redistribution
Social policy scholars disagree about which factors best predict U.S. welfare state generosity. We argue that this disagreement is an artifact of study designs. Researchers usually study either the totality of a state's social expenditures or one specific program. These approaches overlook the fact that individual social programs were born of different circumstances and serve different constituencies. Comparing state-level policies for Temporary …
When “Best Practices” Win, Employees Lose
This article provides a new account of employers' advantages over employees in federal employment discrimination cases. We analyze the effects of judicial deference , in which judges use institutionalized employment structures to infer nondiscrimination without scrutinizing those structures in any meaningful way. Using logistic regression to analyze a representative sample of judicial opinions in federal EEO cases during the first thirty‐five yea…
Legality with a Vengeance
The law and society community has argued for decades for an expansive understanding of what counts as "law." But a content analysis of articles published in the Law & Society Review from its 1966 founding to the present finds that since the 1970s, the law and society community has focused its attention on laws in which the state regulates behavior, and largely ignored laws in which the state distributes resources, goods, and services. Why did soc…
Disputed and disfavored
Situation or Social Problem
Despite a strong interest in media coverage of social problems, sociologists have failed to examine when and why news outlets present issues as problems in need of public action within short time periods. Through content analysis of 475 newspaper articles and negative binomial regression, I show that coverage of homelessness varies in the extent to which it presents homelessness as a social problem. The fact that not all news coverage discusses s…
Multiple Disadvantages
A rich theoretical literature describes the disadvantages facing plaintiffs who suffer multiple, or intersecting, axes of discrimination. This article extends extant literature by distinguishing two forms of intersectionality: demographic intersectionality, in which overlapping demographic characteristics produce disadvantages that are more than the sum of their parts, and claim intersectionality, in which plaintiffs who allege discrimination on …
Disease Politics and Medical Research Funding
In the 1980s and 1990s, single-disease interest groups emerged as an influential force in U.S. politics. This article explores their effects on federal medical research priority-setting. Previous studies of advocacy organizations' political effects focused narrowly on direct benefits for constituents. Using data on 53 diseases over 19 years, I find that in addition to securing direct benefits, advocacy organizations have aggregate effects and can…
Contested Illnesses
When “Best Practices” Win, Employees Lose
This article provides a new account of employers' advantages over employees in federal employment discrimination cases. We analyze the effects of judicial deference , in which judges use institutionalized employment structures to infer nondiscrimination without scrutinizing those structures in any meaningful way. Using logistic regression to analyze a representative sample of judicial opinions in federal EEO cases during the first thirty‐five yea…
Logics of Redistribution
Social policy scholars disagree about which factors best predict U.S. welfare state generosity. We argue that this disagreement is an artifact of study designs. Researchers usually study either the totality of a state's social expenditures or one specific program. These approaches overlook the fact that individual social programs were born of different circumstances and serve different constituencies. Comparing state-level policies for Temporary …
Legality with a Vengeance
The law and society community has argued for decades for an expansive understanding of what counts as "law." But a content analysis of articles published in the Law & Society Review from its 1966 founding to the present finds that since the 1970s, the law and society community has focused its attention on laws in which the state regulates behavior, and largely ignored laws in which the state distributes resources, goods, and services. Why did soc…
The Stigma of Diseases
Why are some diseases more stigmatized than others? And, has disease stigma declined over time? Answers to these questions have been hampered by a lack of comparable, longitudinal data. Using word embedding methods, we analyze 4.7 million news articles to create new measures of stigma for 106 health conditions from 1980 to 2018. Using mixed-effects regressions, we find that behavioral health conditions and preventable diseases attract the stronge…
Creative confluence
How do six collaborators-a medical sociologist, two law professors, and three graduate students at different stages of their PhD programs-meld their disparate perspectives into one coherent essay memorializing Lauren Edelman, who brought them together for a multi-year study of judicial reasoning in federal disability discrimination cases and then left them, so suddenly and so young, to carry on without her
Disputed and disfavored
Disease frames and their consequences for stigma and medical research funds
Illnesses are often understood as criminal acts, as medically treatable conditions, or through metaphors of battles and journeys. Theorists suggest that frames vary across diseases and over time in systematic ways, and that frames have concrete consequences for the distribution of resources. But data limitations have prevented scholars from testing these hypotheses. We combine word embeddings and regression analysis to examine four frames for 104…
“I want to worry about it
Political science (10 works) · Law (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Medicine (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Criminology (3 works) · Disease (3 works) · Psychiatry (3 works)