This collection examines the diverse, and often conflicted, political status of health in the USA from World War II to Covid-19. It moves beyond biomedical conceptions by using the lenses of class, poverty, race, gender, sexuality and locality to study the concepts, policies and lived realities of U.S. healthcare and medicine.

Introduction: The Political Landscapes of American Health, 1945–2020Martin Halliwell and Sophie A. Jones Part I. Geography, Community and American Health 1. Health and Inequality in the Postwar MetropolisAndrew R. Highsmith 2. Poverty, Health and Health Care in Rural CommunitiesJessica D. Ulrich-Schad, Cynthia M. Duncan and Kristin Koci 3. The Politics of Immigration Meets the Politics of Health CareBeatrix Hoffman 4. Latinxs and the US Health Care SystemRocío Calvo and Victor Figuereo 5. American Indian Health: The Medicine Wheel versus the Iron Triangle Margaret P. Moss Part II. Critical Health Conditions: Debates and Histories 6. The Politics of Polio Vaccination in Postwar America, 1950–60: Detractors and DefendersStephen E. Mawdsley 7. Beyond the Cancer WarsS. Løchlann Jain 8. A System in Crisis: US Health Care Politics and the AIDS Epidemic Jonathan Bell 9. The Politics of ‘Obesity’: Medicalisation, Stigmatisation and Liberation of Fat BodiesKatelyn B. Ferreira and Katrina T. Webber 10. Revising Diagnoses, Reinventing Psychiatry: DSM and Major Depressive DisorderOwen Whooley Part III. The Politics of Children’s Health 11. US Children’s Health Insurance: Policy Advocacy and Ideological ConflictAlice Sardell 12. Autism and the Anti-Vaccine MovementKristin Bumiller 13. Diagnosing Deficit, Promising Enhancement: ADHD and Stimulants on ScreenSophie A. Jones 14. On the Possibility of Affirmative Health Care for Transgender ChildrenJules Gill-Peterson 15. Black Infant Mortality: Continuities, Contestations and CareAnnie Menzel and Tia Murray Part IV. The Institutional Matrix of Health Care 16. The Regional and Racial Politics of Postwar Hospitals Karen Kruse Thomas 17. Health Activism in the 1960s and the Community Health Centre System Thomas J. Ward Jr. 18. The Veterans Administration and PTSD: Challenges and Changes from Vietnam to IraqJenna Pitchford-Hyde 19. The Pharmaceutical Industry, Drug Regulation and US Health ServicesDavid Healy 20. The National Institutes of Health: Courting Congress, Creating a Research InfrastructureDavid Cantor Part V. The White House, Congress and Health Reform 21. Left Out: Health Security and the American Welfare State, 1935–50 Colin Gordon 22. Medicare and Medicaid after the Great Society: Containing Costs, Expanding CoverageJill Quadagno 23. Mental Health, Stigma and Federal Reform in the 1970s and 1990sMartin Halliwell 24. The War on Drugs: Nixon, Reagan, Trump Matthew R. Pembleton 25. Obamacare and its CriticsAlex Waddan Part VI. Justice, Ethics and American Health 26. Roe v. Wade and the Cultural Politics of Abortion: The Shift from Rights to HealthMary Ziegler 27. Genetics, Health and the Making of America’s Triracial Isolates, 1950–80Michell Chresfield 28. The Rhetoric and Politics of American Ageism: Notes from a PandemicJudy Z. Segal 29. Towards a Structural Competency Framework for Addressing US Gun ViolenceJonathan M. Metzl, Philip J. Pettis, Tara McKay and Jennifer L. Piemonte 30. Mass Incarceration and Health Inequity in the United States Johanna T. Crane Part VII. Public Health and Global Health 31. Occupational and Environmental Health in Twentieth-Century AmericaDavid Rosner and Gerald Markowitz 32. Environmental Health beyond the State: Thinking through the 1970sJennifer Thomson 33. Bioterrorism, Pandemic and the American Public Melanie Armstrong 34. Health Internationalism in the US and Beyond Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Theodore M. Brown 35. Pandemics and the Politics of Planetary HealthPriscilla Wald General BibliographyBiographiesIndex