16th Edition

Medical Sociology

By William C. Cockerham Copyright 2025
496 Pages 1 Color & 60 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

496 Pages 1 Color & 60 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

496 Pages 1 Color & 60 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

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 the book’s inception, its principal goal has been to introduce students to the field of medical sociology and... Read more

Part I: Introduction  1. Medical Sociology  2. Social Epidemiology  3. The Social Causes, Impacts, and Responses to COVID-19  4. The Social Demography of Health: Social Class  5. The Social Demography of Health: Gender  6. The Social Demography of Health: Age and Race  Part II: Health and Illness  7. Social Stress and Health  8. Health Behavior and Lifestyles  9. Illness Behavior and the Sick Role  Part III: Providing Health Care  10. Physician–Patient Interaction  11. Physicians  12. The Physician in a Changing Society  13. Nurses, Physician Assistants, Pharmacists, and Midwives  14. Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)  Part IV: Health-Care Delivery Systems  15. Hospitals  16. Health Care Reform and Health Public Policy in the United States  17. Global Health Care

Biography

William C. Cockerham is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Chair Emeritus at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Research Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. He previously held a joint appointment in sociology and psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is past President of the Research Committee on Health Sociology of the International Sociological Association, and formerly served on the editorial boards of the American Sociological Review, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Society and Mental Health, Social Currents, and other journals. Dr. Cockerham has published numerous peer-reviewed papers in academic journals and is author or editor of 20 books. His most recent books from Routledge include Sociology of Mental Disorder (2024), Sociological Theories of Health and Illness (2021), and The COVID-19 Reader: The Science and What It Says About the Social (2021).