Ethnicity, Health and Health Care: Understanding diversity, tackling disadvantage

Abstract

This book, edited by two sociologists who have helped delineate the field, brings the reader up to date through seven empirical studies in ethnicity and health care, covering self-reported health, nutrition, depression, end-of-life care, diabetes, chronic illness and interpretation. Part of the editors’ own introduction is comprised of a brief history of how, belatedly, the sub-discipline of the sociology of health and illness came to embrace the dimension of ethnicity and to recognise the insidious contribution of racism to health status. It is a pity the editors did not give themselves space, in a volume admirably disciplined for length, to write a more detailed review in this respect, for in this way the contours of what might eventually replace the concept of ethnicity might have become more discernible. For, in many of the readings in this monograph, the full import of the carefully crafted approaches offered have perhaps yet to be realised.