Sociologists Available to Discuss Social Implications of Health Care Policy

Sociologists Available to Discuss Social Implications of Health Care Policy

Washington, DC, July 26, 2017 — The American Sociological Association (ASA) has sociologists available to discuss health insurance, health policy, social inequities in health care and medical sociology in general.

Tara McKay is a sociologist and assistant professor of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University. Before joining the faculty at Vanderbilt, Dr. McKay was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines the social, political and economic contexts that shape health and health policy in the US and Africa. Her recent Journal of Health and Social Behavior study finds that access to health insurance can help hold a community together socially, and lack of it can contribute to the fraying of neighborhood cohesion. The study (co-authored with Stefan Timmermans), “Beyond Health Effects? Examining the Social Consequences of Community Levels of Uninsurance Pre-ACA,” seeks to broaden the conversation about the effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Drew Halfmann is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California-Davis. His research focuses on the politics of social policy, with an emphasis on health and reproductive policy. More broadly, his interests lie in the areas of the welfare state, health and illness, political sociology, and social movements. His current project is on the politics of health inequality in the United States. The project examines the historical and contemporary politics of health inequalities by race, ethnicity, class and gender. Most sociologists believe that health inequalities will only be eradicated by addressing social conditions (such as economic inequality, the environment, working conditions, and segregation), but most governmental proposals focus on access to medical care and biomedical research.

Denise Anthony is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Dartmouth College. She is also Research Director of the Institute for Security, Technology, and Society (ISTS) at Dartmouth, Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, and a faculty affiliate at the Center for Health Policy Research at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. In health care, she has studied variation in managed care practices and physician referral behavior. More recently her work examines variation in patient preferences for medical care, the use and implications of information technology in health care, including effects on quality, as well as the privacy and security of protected health information in health care delivery.

Gayle Sulik is one of the most sought-after experts in breast cancer and women’s health. A writer, speaker, and collaborator with 16 years of experience communicating scientific research and information to diverse audiences, Sulik’s ground-breaking analysis of breast cancer, richly described in her book Pink Ribbon Blues: How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women’s Health, explores the complexities of breast cancer as a disease, a social cause, and an industry.

ASA can provide a number of experts on a variety of topics. Please contact us at (202) 247-9873 or [email protected].

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About the American Sociological Association The American Sociological Association (www.asanet.org), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.