The most comprehensive major academic textbook available on its topic, this classic text presents the most important research studies in the field. The author integrates engaging first-person accounts from patients, physicians, and other health care providers throughout the text. Since its inception, this book's principal goal has been to introduce students to the field of medical sociology and serve as a reference for faculty by presenting the most current ideas, issues, concepts, themes, theories, and research findings in the field. This new edition is heavily revised with updated data and important new additions.
New to this edition:
- A contemporary account of medical sociology’s subfields (Chapter 1)
- New chapter on COVID-19 (Chapter 3)
- Update on the widening gap in life expectancy between the rich and the poor (Chapter 4)
- New chapter on gender and health, including the convergence of life expectancy between men and women and its reversal during the COVID-19 pandemic (Chapter 5)
- Updated chapter on aging and expanded discussion of health and race (Chapter 6)
- New developments in doctor-patient interaction, including telemedicine (Chapter 10)
- The survival of the Affordable Care Act (Chapter 16)
William C. Cockerham is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Chair Emeritus
at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Research Scholar of Sociology at
the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA. He held secondary
appointments in medicine and public health at UAB and is recipient of several awards
for scholarly distinction. He is past President of the Research Committee on Health
Sociology of the International Sociological Association and formerly was on the editorial
boards of several journals, including the American Sociological Review and Society and
Mental Health. Currently, he is deputy editor of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
He has published numerous peer-reviewed papers and is author or editor of 20 books.
Recent books are the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology (
2021) and Social Causes of Health and Disease, 3rd ed. (2021). His newest books
with Routledge are Sociological Theories of Health and Illness (2021), Sociology of Mental
Disorder, 11th ed. (2021), and The COVID-19 Reader: What the Science Says About the
Social (2021).
