Synopses & Reviews
Today Blacks live five to seven fewer years than Whites. Black infant mortality is 2.2 times that of Whites. Blacks lead in death rates in 14 of 16 leading diseases, many preventable. Diabetes is 33% more common in Blacks, and cancer mortality has increased 50% for Blacks since 1950 but only 10% for Whites. Breakthroughs such as vaccinations, invasive cardiac procedures, cancer therapies, MRIs, and organ transplants have dramatically improved the health of Americans in the last century, but health care for African Americans has been dangerously deficient, even unavailable.
An American Health Dilemma is the first comprehensive effort to place African Americans'deficit health in its full socio-cultural context. In the highly anticipated volume two, Byrd and Clayton complete the story begun in the first Pulitzer Prize nominated volume, bringing us from the turn of the century to the health care disparities that persist even now.
Backed by exhaustive research, Byrd and Clayton argue that race- and class-based inequities, bias, and inequalities are systemic, culturally embedded problems that in the last hundred years have been marked by small gains, disastrous setbacks, and a passive acceptance of African Americans, and other disadvantaged groups, as a permanent health underclass. Even gains made in the 1960s, they maintain, didn't do enough to advance the health care of African Americans.
A monumental and original work of scholarship, An American Health Dilemma will be the essential reference about the Black medical and health experience for years to come.
Synopsis
First published in 2002. An American Health Dilemma is the story of medicine in the United States from the perspective of people who were consistently, officially mistreated, abused, or neglected by the Western medical tradition and the US health-care system. It is also the compelling story of African Americans fighting to participate fully in the health-care professions in the face of racism and the increased power of health corporations and HMOs. This tour-de-force of research on the relationship between race, medicine, and health care in the United States is an extraordinary achievement by two of the leading lights in the field of public health. Ten years out, it is finally updated, with a new third volume taking the story up to the present and beyond, remaining the premiere and only reference on black public health and the history of African American medicine on the market today. No one who is concerned with American race relations, with access to and quality of health care, or with justice and equality for humankind can afford to miss this powerful resource.