Stemming from the women’s health movement, the Black Panther Party’s health activism, and other early health activism, many groups sprang up around health issues, including many driven by patients dealing with specific diseases and conditions. In earlier work I wrote about mental health activism and environmental activism.
Later I developed a typology of these movements: Health Access Movements, which seek equitable access and improved quality of care; Constituency-Based Health Movements, which address health inequality and inequity based on race, ethnicity, gender, class and/or sexuality differences; and Embodied Health Movements, which involve people’s direct experience with disease and the ways in which lay activists leverage that experience to challenge science on etiology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention. In addition to articles on this subject, I co-edited with Stephen Zavestoski a special issue of Sociology of Health and Illness, which was subsequently published as a book. This line of scholarship also includes reflexive articles on the interaction of research and activism. A list of our many published articles and books is found at here.
