Howard Waitzkin
Biographic Data
| ID | 82884 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Howard Waitzkin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Howard |
| FAMILY NAME | Waitzkin |
| SIGNATURE | WAITZKIN H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of New Mexico |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5084-6117 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 86 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 527 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 86 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1968 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Universal health coverage as hegemonic health policy in low- and middle-income countries: A mixed-methods analysis
Covid-19 in the Two Koreas
The two Koreas—sharing a language, cultural traditions, history of imperial conquest and war, and interrupted family connections—both have mostly succeeded in controlling the pandemic, within different political-economic systems and with markedly different methods
Response to Carter and Sánchez Delgado: Questions of Accuracy and Intellectual Integrity
Note on context.I am responding during the COVID-19 pandemic and international protests against racism.This response reflects an effort more compressed in time and scope than otherwise might be possible.Transparency about my interactions with the authors.These interactions have differed from usual procedures when articles are submitted for publication
Banking on Health: The World Bank and Health Sector Reform in Latin America
Beyond Obamacare: Life, Death, and Social Policy
In “Beyond Obamacare: Life, Death, and Social Policy” (Russell Sage Foundation, 2015) James S. House makes the conservative case for investment in progressive social policies that will improve population health. He argues that reducing social disparities by race, ethnicity, and gender, but particularly by income and education, is the only way to significantly reduce spending on “health care and insurance.” Social justice, according to House, is a…
Doctor–Patient Relationships
Doctor–patient relationships often suffer from barriers that impede communication and understanding. These barriers include socioeconomic conditions such as inequality; structural racism and marginalization of minority populations; and traumatic experiences associated with war and migration. Explanatory models of disease also pose a significant barrier because of differing cultural understandings of sickness and physical symptoms that practitione…
Revolution Now: Teachings from the Global South for Revolutionaries in the Global North
We have entered a period of history fraught with danger but also rich with revolutionary potential. It is time to move beyond our illusions that electoral politics and reforms of the capitalist state can achieve the revolutionary changes that we all know are urgently needed. As we begin to reorient our struggles there are important lessons to be learned from the recent history of the global South.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this artic…
John D. Stoeckle and the Upstream Vision of Social Determinants in Public Health
AffiliationsHoward Waitzkin is with the Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and the Department of Medicine, University of Illinois, Rockford
Waitzkin Responds
Waitzkin Responds Affiliation Howard Waitzkin MD, PhDHoward Waitzkin is with the Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and the Department of Medicine, University of Illinois, Rockford.CopyRightCorrespondence should be sent to Howard Waitzkin, 5406 East Dr, Loves Park, IL 61111 (e-mail: [email protected]edu). Reprints can be ordered at http://www.ajph.org by clicking the “Reprints” link. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.…
Obamacare: The Neoliberal Model Comes Home to Roost in the United States—If We Let It
As the Affordable Care Act (ACA, otherwise known as Obamacare) continues along a very bumpy road, it is worth asking where it came from and what comes next. Officially, Obamacare represents the latest in more than a century of efforts in the United States to achieve universal access to health care. In reality, Obamacare has strengthened the for-profit insurance industry by transferring public, tax-generated revenues to the private sector. It has …
The Communication of Information about Illness
Place as a predictor of health insurance coverage: A multivariate analysis of counties in the United States
Imperialism's Health Component
Medicine and public health have played important roles in imperialism. With the emergence of the United States as an imperial power in the early twentieth century, interlinkages between imperialism, public health, and health institutions were forged through several key mediating institutions. Philanthropic organizations sought to use public health initiatives to address several challenges faced by expanding capitalist enterprises: labor productiv…
Resisting the Imperial Order and Building an Alternative Future in Medicine and Public Health
Although medical and public health have played important roles in the growth and maintenance of the capitalist system, conditions during the twenty-first century have changed to such an extent that a vision of a world without an imperial order has become part of an imaginable future. Throughout the world, diverse struggles against the logic of capital and privatization illustrate the challenges of popular mobilization. In addition to these strugg…
Empire, Health, and Health Care: Perspectives at the End of Empire as We Have Known It
Health and health care have played important roles during the rise of empire and during its subsequent decline. Research has emphasized the underdevelopment of health in less developed countries, the opening of new markets for medical products manufactured in dominant nations, the contribution of public health in enhancing the productivity of labor, the impact of medicine in reinforcing international class relations, and the adverse effects of mi…
Economic Crisis, Restrictive Policies, and the Population’s Health and Health Care: The Greek Case
The global economic crisis has affected the Greek economy with unprecedented severity, making Greece an important test of the relationship between socioeconomic determinants and a population’s well-being. Suicide and homicide mortality rates among men increased by 22.7% and 27.6%, respectively, between 2007 and 2009, and mental disorders, substance abuse, and infectious disease morbidity showed deteriorating trends during 2010 and 2011. Utilizati…
AJPH Supplement on Military Suicide
As coordinators of a civilian network serving active-duty GIs,1,2 we comment on the Supplement about military suicide.3
Advancing the business creed? The framing of decisions about public sector managed care
Relatively little research has clarified how executives of for-profit healthcare organisations frame their own motivations and behaviour, or how government officials frame their interactions with executives. Because managed care has provided an organisational structure for health services in many countries, we focused our study on executives and government officials who were administering public sector managed care services. Emphasising theoretic…
Depressive Symptoms and Their Social Contexts: A Qualitative Systematic Literature Review of Contextual Interventions
Background: Numerous observational studies demonstrate associations between social context and depressive symptoms, yet few intervention trials exist in this arena. Aims: This review examines intervention trials that explore the impact of contextual change on depressive symptoms. Methods: Electronic literature databases of PubMed and PsycINFO, bibliographies of retrieved articles and the publicly available internet were searched for English-langu…
Multinational corporations, the state, and contemporary medicine
In this paper we explore the ways in which corporations have become powerful actors in the political and economic landscapes, and the role the state has played in this development. Focusing on the pharmaceutical industry, we find that revolving door practices have been a key instrument in furthering the growth of corporate power, leading us to a reconsideration of the concepts of class struggle and the role of the state in the maintenance of the …
The Vicissitudes of Public Health Policy in the Americas
The Vicissitudes of Public Health Policy in the Americas Amy Whitfield (bio) and Howard Waitzkin (bio) Marriage of Convenience: Rockefeller International Health and Revolutionary Mexico. By Anne-Emanuelle Birn. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006. Pp. 434. $95.00 cloth. Cold War, Deadly Fevers: Malaria Eradication in Mexico, 1955–1975. By Marcos Cueto. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Pp. 264. $45.00 cloth. The Valu…
Selling the Obama Plan: Mistakes, Misunderstandings, and Other Misdemeanors
First I congratulate all people in the United States who are working hard to reform our health care system. Although I support these efforts, I want to clarify what single-payer health care is and is not, and how it differs from the “public option” proposed by the Obama administration and various advocacy organizations.1–3 A single-payer health care program basically would extend Medicare to the entire US population. Although Medicare is not with…
Social Capital and Health Care Experiences Among Low-Income Individuals
Objectives. We examined relationships between social capital and health service measures among low-income individuals and assessed the psychometric properties of a theory-based measure of social capital. Methods. We conducted a statewide telephone survey of 1216 low-income New Mexico residents. Respondents reported on barriers to health care access, use of health care services, satisfaction with care, and quality of provider communication and ans…
Medicaid Managed Care for Mental Health Services: The Survival of Safety Net Institutions in Rural Settings
Few accounts document the rural context of mental health safety net institutions (SNIs), especially as they respond to changing public policies. Embedded in wider processes of welfare state restructuring, privatization has transformed state Medicaid systems nationwide. We carried out an ethnographic study in two rural, culturally distinct regions of New Mexico to assess the effects of Medicaid managed care (MMC) and the implications for future re…
An ethnography of clinic "noise" in a community-based, promotora-centered mental health intervention
A Critical Theory of Medical Discourse: Ideology, Social Control, and the Processing of Social Context in Medical Encounters
The personal troubles that patients bring to doctors often have roots in social issues beyond medicine. While medical encounters involve "micro-level" interactions between individuals, these interpersonal processes occur in a social context shaped by "macro-level" structures in society. Examining prior theories pertinent to medical discourse leads to the propositions: (a) that medical encounters tend to convey ideologic messages supportive of the…
Information Giving in Medical Care
Information giving is a crucial element of medical care. This research project considered two theoretically grounded hypotheses: (1) Doctors may withhold information and maintain uncertainty to preserve power in the doctor-patient relationship, and (2) class-based sociolinguistic differences in language use may create further impediments to information giving. A multivariate research model was operationalized to study these hypotheses and to asse…
Managed care in Latin America
Social Medicine Then and Now: Lessons From Latin America
The accomplishments of Latin American social medicine remain little known in the English-speaking world. In Latin America, social medicine differs from public health in its definitions of populations and social institutions, its dialectic vision of “health–illness,” and its stance on causal inference. A “golden age” occurred during the 1930s, when Salvador Allende, a pathologist and future president of Chile, played a key role. Later influences i…
When nurses double as interpreters: A study of Spanish-speaking patients in a US primary care setting
Information control and the micropolitics of health care: Summary of an ongoing research project
Economic Crisis, Restrictive Policies, and the Population’s Health and Health Care: The Greek Case
The global economic crisis has affected the Greek economy with unprecedented severity, making Greece an important test of the relationship between socioeconomic determinants and a population’s well-being. Suicide and homicide mortality rates among men increased by 22.7% and 27.6%, respectively, between 2007 and 2009, and mental disorders, substance abuse, and infectious disease morbidity showed deteriorating trends during 2010 and 2011. Utilizati…
The exploitation of illness in capitalist society
Safety-Net Institutions Buffer the Impact of Medicaid Managed Care: A Multi-Method Assessment in a Rural State
Objectives. This project used a long-term, multi-method approach to study the impact of Medicaid managed care. Methods. Survey techniques measured impacts on individuals, and ethnographic methods assessed effects on safety-net providers in New Mexico. Results. After the first year of Medicaid managed care, uninsured adults reported less access and use (odds ratio [OR] = 0.46; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.34, 0.64) and worse barriers to care (…
The black box in somatization: Unexplained physical symptoms, culture, and narratives of trauma
Economic development, political-economic system, and the physical quality of life
This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development. The World Bank was the principal source of statistical data for 123 countries (97 per cent of the world's population). PQL variables included: indicators of health, health services, and nutrition (infant mortality rate, child death rate, life expectancy, population per physician, populati…
Global Trade and Public Health
Global trade and international trade agreements have transformed the capacity of governments to monitor and to protect public health, to regulate occupational and environmental health conditions and food products, and to ensure affordable access to medications. Proposals under negotiation for the World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the regional Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement cover a wide …
A Marxian interpretation of the growth and development of coronary care technology
Cost containment efforts will fail if they continue to ignore the structural relationships between health care costs and private profit in capitalist society. The recent history of coronary care shows that apparent irrationalities of health policy make sense from the standpoint of capitalist profit structure. Coronary care units (CCUs) gained wide acceptance, despite high costs. Studies of CCU effectiveness, using random controlled trials and epi…
Prevalence and Correlates of Mental Disorders Among Native American Women in Primary Care
Objectives. We examined the lifetime and the past-year prevalence and correlates of common mental disorders among American Indian and Alaska Native women who presented for primary care. Methods. We screened 489 consecutively presenting female primary care patients aged 18 through 45 years with the General Health Questionnaire, 12-item version. A subsample (n = 234) completed the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. We examined associatio…
La atención gerenciada en América Latina. Transnacionalización del sector salud en el contexto de la reforma
Este artículo presenta resultados de la investigación comparativa "Atención Gerenciada en América Latina: Su Papel en la Reforma de los Sistemas de Salud", realizada por equipos de Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Ecuador y Estados Unidos. El objetivo del estudio fue analizar el proceso de exportación de la atención gerenciada, especialmente desde Estado Unidos, y su incorporación en los países latinoamericanos. Los métodos utilizados incluyeron técnica…
Women and health: The politics of sex in medicine
Processing narratives of self-destructive behavior in routine medical encounters: Health promotion, disease prevention, and the discourse of health care
Medicaid Managed Care for Mental Health Services: The Survival of Safety Net Institutions in Rural Settings
Few accounts document the rural context of mental health safety net institutions (SNIs), especially as they respond to changing public policies. Embedded in wider processes of welfare state restructuring, privatization has transformed state Medicaid systems nationwide. We carried out an ethnographic study in two rural, culturally distinct regions of New Mexico to assess the effects of Medicaid managed care (MMC) and the implications for future re…
Global trade, public health, and health services: Stakeholders' constructions of the key issues
Social Capital and Health Care Experiences Among Low-Income Individuals
Objectives. We examined relationships between social capital and health service measures among low-income individuals and assessed the psychometric properties of a theory-based measure of social capital. Methods. We conducted a statewide telephone survey of 1216 low-income New Mexico residents. Respondents reported on barriers to health care access, use of health care services, satisfaction with care, and quality of provider communication and ans…
Micropolitics of Medicine: Theoretical Issues
Latent functions of the sick role in various institutional settings
Narratives of Aging and Social Problems in Medical Encounters with Older Persons
This study asks: How do older patients and their doctors deal with social problems in the discourse of routine medical encounters? Our research has been influenced by a growing recognition of narratives as an important analytic focus in the study of patient-doctor communication. We attempted to advance theoretical knowledge by emphasizing elements of sociocultural context, ideology, social control, underlying structure, and features of discourse …
An ethnography of clinic "noise" in a community-based, promotora-centered mental health intervention
Universal health coverage as hegemonic health policy in low- and middle-income countries: A mixed-methods analysis
Truth's Search for Power: The Dilemmas of the Social Sciences
Journal Article Truth's Search for Power: The Dilemmas of the Social Sciences Get access Howard Waitzkin Howard Waitzkin 1Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 15, Issue 4, Spring 1968, Pages 408–419, https://doi.org/10.2307/799829 Published: 06 August 2014
La Ley de Cuidado de la Salud Asequible y la transformación del sistema de cuidado de la salud estadounidense
El periodo neoliberal ha sido acompañado por una transformación transcendental en el seno del sistema de salud estadounidense. Como resultado de una serie de dinámicas políticas e históricas, la nueva ley de atención a la salud firmada por Barack Obama en el 2010 –La Ley de Cuidado de la Salud Asequible (ACA)‐ se basó menos en modelos universales de otros países que lo que se propuso en reformas conservadoras anteriores del sistema de salud. Esto…
Latent functions of the sick role in various institutional settings
Poverty and Health: A Sociological Analysis.John Kosa , Aaron Antonovsky , Irving Kenneth Zola
Health and the family: A review essay
The exploitation of illness in capitalist society
Handbook of medical sociology
Health Care and Socialism in Chile
The problems that the Unidad Popular (UP) government faced in its attempts to restructure the Chilean health system mirrored many of the conflicts and contraindications which led to its downfall. Our purpose in this report is to analyze the changes that occurred in health care during the UP period, the political and economic constraints that limited the viability of the socialized health system, and the dismantling of the health system that has o…
Who Shall Live? Health, Economics, and Social Choice
Information control and the micropolitics of health care: Summary of an ongoing research project
Controlling medical expansion
Medicine, superstructure and micropolitics
Author's rejoinder
A Marxian interpretation of the growth and development of coronary care technology
Cost containment efforts will fail if they continue to ignore the structural relationships between health care costs and private profit in capitalist society. The recent history of coronary care shows that apparent irrationalities of health policy make sense from the standpoint of capitalist profit structure. Coronary care units (CCUs) gained wide acceptance, despite high costs. Studies of CCU effectiveness, using random controlled trials and epi…
Marxian interpretation of coronary care technology
Marxian interpretation of coronary care technology. H WaitzkinCopyRight https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.70.4.437 Published Online: October 07, 2011
Imperialism, health and medicine
Health Policy and Social Change: A Comparative History of Chile and Cuba
The social histories of Chile and Cuba demonstrate the links between medicine and broader social change. When the socialist government of Salvador Allende took office in 1970, Chile already had a tradition of public health care, including a national health service. By comparison, the health-care system in Cuba at the time of its 1959 revolution was rudimentary and inferior. Chile did not succeed in developing a structurally different health-care …
California's cutbacks in public-sector medicine: Two-class health care returns to the United States
Consumerism in Medicine: Challenging Physician Authority
Chapter One Power and Health Chapter Two Legitimative Power Chapter Three Gathering the Evidence Chapter Four The Realities of Public Challenge and Physician Responses Chapter Five Reasons Why -- The Public Chapter Six Reasons Why -- The Physicians Chapter Seven Consumerism and Physician Utilization Chapter Eight Identifying Consumerism's Effects Chapter Nine Consumerism in Medicine References Appendices
Corporate Interests, Philanthropies, and the Peace Movement
Nuclear war threatens all of us, even capitalists, and some members of the capitalist class apparently have realized that nuclear holocaust may not be in capital's long-term interests. This realization poses some interesting problems, since North American corporations have invested so heavily in the arms race. Beyond the threats to economic stability, it is hard to imagine that accumulated wealth will be nearly so enjoyable after a nuclear war. F…
Women and health: The politics of sex in medicine
The Second Sickness: Contradictions of Capitalist Health Care
Information Giving in Medical Care
Information giving is a crucial element of medical care. This research project considered two theoretically grounded hypotheses: (1) Doctors may withhold information and maintain uncertainty to preserve power in the doctor-patient relationship, and (2) class-based sociolinguistic differences in language use may create further impediments to information giving. A multivariate research model was operationalized to study these hypotheses and to asse…
Economic development, political-economic system, and the physical quality of life
This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development. The World Bank was the principal source of statistical data for 123 countries (97 per cent of the world's population). PQL variables included: indicators of health, health services, and nutrition (infant mortality rate, child death rate, life expectancy, population per physician, populati…
Micropolitics of Medicine: Theoretical Issues
Medicine (48 works) · Political science (47 works) · Sociology (37 works) · Law (30 works) · Psychology (29 works) · Health care (26 works) · Economics (24 works) · Nursing (19 works) · Politics (19 works) · Public health (19 works)