Summary
The concise guide to health - what it is, how we measure it and what it means - now updated for the 21st century. The new edition contains: an extended discussion of health inequalities in the light of the 1998 Acheson report; new material throughout on alternative and complimentary approaches to health; an extended section on the gendering of health care; and a new chapter on late modern explanations of health and illness including an analysis of the health panics around AIDs, BSE and meningitis. This accessible introduction to the key concepts and issues in the study of health aims to be a valuable starting place both for academic students of health and society and for those beginning their training in the professional health services.