Social medicine, starting two centuries ago, has shown that social conditions affect health and illness more than biology does, and social change affects the outcomes of health and illness more than health services do. Understanding and exposing sickness-generating structures in society helps us change them.

This first book providing a critical introduction to social medicine sheds light on an increasingly important field. The authors draw on examples worldwide to show how principles based on solidarity and mutual aid have enabled people to participate collaboratively to construct health-promoting social conditions. The book offers vital information and analysis to enhance our understanding regarding the promotion of health through social and individual means; the micro-politics of medical encounters; the social determination of illness; the influences of racism, class, gender, and ethnicity on health; health and empire; and health praxis, reform, and sociomedical activism. Illustrations are included throughout the book to convey these key themes and important issues, as well as on Routledge’s webpage for the book, under the Support Materials tab.

The authors offer compelling ways to understand and to change the social dimensions of health and health care. Students, teachers, practitioners, activists, policy makers, and people concerned about health and health care will value this book, which goes beyond the usual approaches of texts in public health, medical sociology, health economics, and health policy.

Howard Waitzkin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of New Mexico and practices internal medicine part time in New Mexico and Illinois. For many years he has been active in struggles focusing on social medicine in the United States and Latin America. He is author and coordinator with the Working Group for Health beyond Capitalism of Health Care under the Knife: Moving beyond Capitalism for Our Health (2018), and author of Medicine and Public Health at the End of Empire (2011), among other books.

Alina Pérez is a community-based physician at St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, Massachusetts. A graduate of the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford, she completed her residency at the Beth Israel Deaconess Harvard-Affiliated Medical Center in Boston. She has conducted research on health policy and is pursuing interests in global health and social medicine.

Matthew Anderson is Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. As a family physician working in the Bronx, New York, he is a core faculty member of the Montefiore Residency Program in Social Medicine. He is founder and co-editor of the bilingual online journal Social Medicine/Medicina Social.