Unequal Health examines the reasons why stark differences in health and well-being persist, even as the health care industry and access to health care grow. The third edition of this powerful book retains the accessible style and focus on inequality from previous editions while featuring significant new material throughout. After an overview of key themes, the book introduces the concept of epidemiology-measuring the number of people who are sick or dying-and offers an overview of health trends over time. Author Grace Budrys distills the latest research to consider the relevance of sex, race, income, and education, and relative social status on health. The book discusses disease, habits that contribute to health, the relationship between health care and health status, genetics, socioeconomic inequality, health policy, and more. The third edition features a new chapter on diet, an increased discussion of substance abuse and the attention it receives based on who is engaging in this behavior, new material on income and education variables and inequality, a new discussion of the Affordable Care Act and its impact, and more.

How Nonprofits Work looks at nonprofit organizations through a sociological lens, identifying characteristics that make some nonprofits successful and characteristics that cause challenges, focusing on nonprofits in the health services sector. The book opens with helpful background information about nonprofit organizations, then shares case studies that take readers more deeply into the challenges and successes of various organizations. Given the trials nonprofits face, this timely book helps readers move beyond the good intentions in nonprofits to find successful practices.

The authors recontextualize contemporary sociological theory to argue that in recent decades sociology has been deeply permeated by a new paradigm, conflict constructionism. Their analysis integrates and sheds new light on eight prominent domains of recent social thought: the micro-level; discourses, framing, and renewed interest in signs and language; the construction of difference and dominance; regulation and punishment; cultural complexity and transculturation; the body; new approaches to the role of the state; and a consistent conflict perspective. The paradigm combines elements of both social construction theory and conflict theory. It has deep roots in critical theory and more recent links to postmodernism. It is associated with postmodern social thought, although it is less radical and more adaptable to empirical inquiry than postmodernism. The authors tie their new conceptualization of social theory to contemporary applications of social theory in everyday life. Features of this text:

Rethinking Contemporary Social Theory outlines a new theoretical paradigm emerging from out of social construction theory, conflict theory, Marxism and critical theory and argues that these insights are redefining social theory as a whole. The authors select ten fields within sociology and in each one trace the reception and impact of the new paradigm. The fields include gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, media and the sociology of family life. Drawing on Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the authors identify causes for this paradigm shift, which include the contributions of specific individuals, the general intellectual climate and various social changes such as globalisation and neoliberalism.

How Nonprofits Work looks at nonprofit organizations through a sociological lens, identifying characteristics that make some nonprofits successful and characteristics that cause challenges, focusing on nonprofts in the health services sector. The book opens with helpful background information about nonprofit organizations, then shares case studies that take readers more deeply into the challenges and successes of various organizations. Given the trials nonprofits face in the current economic climate, this timely book helps readers move beyond the good intentions in nonprofits to find successful practices.

Market-Based Health Care will define for students the challenges, arguments and politics behind the concept of consumer driven health care including what it would look like if the business sector would do a better job of organizing our health care arrangements and remove any governmental components built into the system. As a sociologist interested in health care, Budrys focuses on the impact our health care arrangements have on not just an economic level but how they affect people as well. This is an overwhelmingly complex topic and debate and one that is discussed widely in the classroom. This will be the first text to clearly present the market-based health care model and how doctors, medical insurance and "big pharma" play a role in its development.

Unequal Health examines the reasons why stark differences in health and well-being persist, even as the health care industry and access to health care grow. The third edition of this powerful book retains the accessible style and focus on inequality from previous editions while featuring significant new material throughout. After an overview of key themes, the book introduces the concept of epidemiology-measuring the number of people who are sick or dying-and offers an overview of health trends over time. Author Grace Budrys distills the latest research to consider the relevance of sex, race, income, and education, and relative social status on health. The book discusses disease, habits that contribute to health, the relationship between health care and health status, genetics, socioeconomic inequality, health policy, and more. The third edition features a new chapter on diet, an increased discussion of substance abuse and the attention it receives based on who is engaging in this behavior, new material on income and education variables and inequality, a new discussion of the Affordable Care Act and its impact, and more.

Market-Based Health Care will define for students the challenges, arguments and politics behind the concept of consumer driven health care including what it would look like if the business sector would do a better job of organizing our health care arrangements and remove any governmental components built into the system. As a sociologist interested in health care, Budrys focuses on the impact our health care arrangements have on not just an economic level but how they affect people as well. This is an overwhelmingly complex topic and debate and one that is discussed widely in the classroom. This will be the first text to clearly present the market-based health care model and how doctors, medical insurance and "big pharma" play a role in its development.

Our Unsystematic Health Care System presents readers with a comprehensive overview of the U.S. health care delivery system. Significantly revised and updated, the fourth edition explores the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare," as it unfolds-including both challenges and successes. Grace Budrys traces how dissatisfied Americans have been with the country's health care arrangements and the continuing changes of health care reforms. The fourth edition examines the impact the Affordable Care Act has had on the U.S. health care system since it was enacted in 2010, including efforts to identify the appropriate indicators to gauge the law's effects. As in previous editions, the book introduces readers to health insurance arrangements in the United States, including private and public health insurance plans, then compares our health care system to those in other countries, which often have better patient outcomes and lower cost. The fourth edition points out the factors outside of the health care system that might play a role in explaining why Americans do not enjoy better health and longer life expectancy. Our Unsystematic Health Care System is an ideal book for introducing readers, especially students in courses such as medical sociology, public health, or health policy and administration, to the basics of the complex U.S. health care system in an accessible way.

Our Unsystematic Health Care System presents readers with a comprehensive overview of the U.S. health care delivery system. Significantly revised and updated, the fourth edition explores the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare," as it unfolds-including both challenges and successes. Grace Budrys traces how dissatisfied Americans have been with the country's health care arrangements and the continuing changes of health care reforms. The fourth edition examines the impact the Affordable Care Act has had on the U.S. health care system since it was enacted in 2010, including efforts to identify the appropriate indicators to gauge the law's effects. As in previous editions, the book introduces readers to health insurance arrangements in the United States, including private and public health insurance plans, then compares our health care system to those in other countries, which often have better patient outcomes and lower cost. The fourth edition points out the factors outside of the health care system that might play a role in explaining why Americans do not enjoy better health and longer life expectancy. Our Unsystematic Health Care System is an ideal book for introducing readers, especially students in courses such as medical sociology, public health, or health policy and administration, to the basics of the complex U.S. health care system in an accessible way.

Current and anticipated changes in this country's health care system are likely to add momentum to the physicians' union movement, according to Grace Budrys. She documents the emergence and development of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD), founded in the San Francisco Bay area in 1972, and suggests it may be a harbinger of renewed organizing efforts throughout the country.Representing both salaried and private practice doctors, the UAPD gained strength in the early 1980s during the crisis in malpractice suits, and surged again in recent years in response to steadily increasing medical corporatization. Budrys argues that the approach to modernization now favored across the country resembles that of the industrialization era. As health organizations become larger, more centralized, and more hierarchical, decisions are made further from the work site and some traditional responsibilities are delegated to lower-paid, less-trained workers.Nevertheless, the image of blue-collar industrial workers organizing into unions is not easily reconciled with our society's image of physicians as highly trained and highly skilled members of a profession long considered the bastion of individualists. Budrys suggests that doctors' unions in general and the UAPD in particular may provide a model for other nontraditional groups and occupations seeking solutions to contemporary problems in the workplace. After discussing the laws governing workers' organizing rights and their interpretation by the courts, she concludes with commentary on the organizing activity taking place among highly paid and highly educated workers.