Health, Medicine and Justice: Designing a Fair and Equitable Healthcare System
By Joshua Freeman, M.D.
I hope that this book complements the others (by Donohoe, Geyman, Young, and others), offering a perspective that combines a physician’s knowledge of medical care and how it is delivered, a scholar’s understanding of the organization of the health system, social determinants of of health and health disparities, a caring person’s commitment to justice and equity, and an activists’s desire to change the world. I hope it is of some value.
Contents
Chapter 1: Why Do We Have a Healthcare System?
Chapter 2: The U.S. Healthcare System: Best in the World?
Chapter 3: The Social Determinants of Health and Health Inequities
Chapter 4: Impact of the U.S. Health System on the Health of the Public
Chapter 5: Primary Care: The Essential Basis for an Effective Healthcare System
Chapter 6: The Role of Medical Education in Perpetuating the Health System
Chapter 7: Graduate Medical Education
Chapter 8: Assessing Appropriate Healthcare: Sometimes the Best Thing to Do Is Nothing
Chapter 9: The Role of Profit in U.S. Health Care
Chapter 10: Solutions and Projected Outcomes
Health, Medicine and Justice, by Joshua Freeman: http://www.amazon.com/Medicine-Justice-Designing-Equitable-Healthcare/dp/0988799685
Josh Freeman’s Blog: Medicine and Social Justice: http://www.medicinesocialjustice.blogspot.com
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Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
Many books have been written about the problems and potential solutions for our health care system. This one stands out because it represents the informed views of a noted physician educator who is also a health and social justice activist. He hopes the book is “of some value,” and it assuredly is.
Joshua Freeman is a leader in primary care, both as a practitioner and as an academic, being the Chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He has an excellent understanding of our disorganized health care system and of the social determinants of health and health inequities. He has studied extensively medicine and social justice, and shares his views through his blog. This book brings to print the basis of his passionate activism in support of equitable health care for all.
As the nation meanders on with implementation of the well-meaning but intolerably deficient policies of the Affordable Care Act, this book can give us renewal in our efforts to educate the nation on the policies that actually would work to bring affordable and equitable health care to all.