Routledge International Handbook of Critical Issues in Health and Illness

The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Issues in Health and Illness is a multidisciplinary reference book that brings together cutting-edge health and illness topics from around the globe. It offers a range of theoretical and critical perspectives to provide contemporary insights into complex health issues that can offer ways to address inequitable patterns of illness and ill-health.

This collection, written by an international pool of expert academics from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, is unique in providing theoretical and critical analyses on key health topics, considering power and broader social structures that influence health and illness outcomes. The chapters are organised in three parts. The first covers medical contexts; here chapters provide commentary and critical analysis of the history of medicine, medicalisation, pharmaceuticalisation, services and care, medical technology, diagnosis, screening, medical technology, and complementary and alternative medicine. The second part covers life contexts; chapters cover a range of life contexts which have implications for health, including gender, sexuality, reproduction, disability, ethnicity, indigeneity, inequality, ageing, and dying. The third part covers shifting contextual domains; chapters consider contemporary areas of life that are rapidly changing, including health in relation to inequality, gender, sexual orientation, reproduction, ethnicity, indigeneity, disability, ageing, commercialisation, climate change, and globalisation.

The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Issues in Health and Illness is a key contemporary reference text for scholars, students, researchers, and professionals across disciplines including sociology, psychology, anthropology, geography, medicine, public health, and health science.