A01=Carolyn Rouse
african americans
ambivalence
american healthcare system
anthropology
Author_Carolyn Rouse
black americans
Category=JBSL
Category=MBP
Category=MBS
community based health programs
cultural assumptions
disease
doctor
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
health disparity
healthcare
healthcare services
human condition
life and death
medical treatment
medicine
mental suffering
national policy
pain and suffering
physical suffering
politics of racism
race in america
resource limitations
sicker
sickle cell anemia
sickle cell patients
sickness
symptoms
united states of america
wealth disparity
Product details
- ISBN 9780520259126
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 03 Aug 2009
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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On average, black Americans are sicker and die earlier than white Americans. "Uncertain Suffering" provides a richly nuanced examination of what this fact means for health care in the United States through the lens of sickle cell anemia, a disease that primarily affects blacks. In a wide ranging analysis that moves from individual patient cases to the compassionate yet distanced professionalism of health care specialists to the level of national policy, Carolyn Moxley Rouse uncovers the cultural assumptions that shape the quality and delivery of care for sickle cell patients. She reveals a clinical world fraught with uncertainties over how to treat black patients given resource limitations and ambivalence. Her book is a compelling look at the ways in which the politics of racism, attitudes toward pain and suffering, and the reliance on charity for healthcare services for the underclass can create disparities in the U.S. Instead of burdening hospitals and clinics with the task of ameliorating these disparities, Rouse argues that resources should be redirected to community-based health programs that reduce daily forms of physical and mental suffering.
Carolyn Moxley Rouse, Associate Professor at Princeton University, is the author of Engaged Surrender: African-American Women and Islam (UC Press). She has produced and directed documentaries including Purification to Prozac: Treating Mental Illness in Bali.
