Building on our reputation for publishing high quality student textbooks, and cutting-edge work by leading authors, we are pleased to announce a major new list of titles in health and social care. These are suitable for use by students of the allied health professions, and social work.
Following in the Polity tradition, the books will not only present a critical approach, but will also provide exceptionally engaging introductions to the core themes in each area.
Visit our highlights page for more information on our new and forthcoming general interest titles.
Hubley and Copeman: Practical Health Promotion
This introductory health promotion textbook assumes no previous knowledge of the subject. It includes comprehensive coverage of all the key topics in contemporary health promotion, including chapters on health promotion through the lifespan, one-to-one communication, working with groups, using the media and digital technologies, advocacy, and planning and management.
Throughout the text there are suggested activities to develop students’ understanding, and to encourage reflective practice. Each chapter opens with a list of the central issues and learning objectives, and key terms are highlighted in the text and explained in a clear glossary. Carefully chosen tables, figures and photographs enliven and reinforce the text, while a well-designed website offers up-to-date online resources to test and extend students learning.
Earle: Sociology for Nurses
"The material is presented in a clear, accessible and uncomplicated format. It is helpful to readers who have little knowledge of sociology and its jargon, or how sociological theory connects to nursing practice ... A useful edition to pre-registration nursing student programmes in promoting the importance of sociology and social policy, and how such policies link to nursing practice."
Nursing Standard
The authors also provides:
Nettleton: Sociology of Health and Illness 2nd Edition
"Sarah Nettleton’s Sociology of Health and Illness has become a major text for students studying medical sociology. This second edition is a welcome event ... Its up-to-date treatment of changes in research and health care is essential reading for those attempting to understand matters medical in today’s fast changing environment."
Mike Bury, University of London
Nettleton integrates the core tenets of traditional medical sociology with some fresh insights from the current literature. New material includes discussions of the new genetics, food and eating, e-health, the MMR debate, embryo stem cell research, recent approaches to health inequalities, and the health implications of the information age. Carefully annotated suggested further readings have been added to each chapter, to help extend students’ learning and thinking.
Payne: Health of Men and Women
"This book clearly reviews similarities and differences in women and men’s physical and mental health as shaped by both gender and sex-linked biology, and also varying by outcome and by age, class, race/ethnicity, sexuality and global region. Refreshingly resisting misleading simplifications, Sarah Payne encourages critical thinking about gender, biology and population health."
Nancy Krieger, Harvard School of Public Health
Payne writes for the needs, interests and abilities of upper-level undergraduate students. In addition to drawing on data and debates from the USA, the UK and other industrialized nations, she examines health in developing countries. As well as discussing a range of health-related behaviours, such as diet, exercise, alcohol, smoking and drug use, the book explores in depth topics such as mental health, morbidity and reproduction.
Cockerham: Social Causes of Health & Disease
"Social Causes of Health and Disease will be an extremely useful tool for teachers of medical sociology and others looking for an introduction to the subject that is both scholarly and accessible. Particularly noteworthy and exciting is Cockerham’s health lifestyles model, with his square focus on socioeconomic conditions and other social factors as causes of human health and illness, and his cutting-edge treatment of the interplay of structure and agency in this process. Also extremely valuable is his thoughtful placement of medical sociology in the history of American and British sociology."
Jo C. Phelan, Columbia University
Bury: Health and Illness
"Written in an engaging and accessible style, Health and Illness is outstanding, carefully addressing key classic and contemporary debates within the sociology of health and illness, and illustrating these with the most up-to-date research."
Sara Arber, University of Surrey
Bury highlights various factors, such as gender, age, ethnicity and class, which influence the occurrence and distribution of illness over time. The book then focuses on debates about the body, the role of health services and the politics of health policy. In conclusion, Bury argues that we must take a dynamic view of health and illness as processes that are shaped by social circumstances and altering perceptions.
Bartley: Health Inequality
"This book makes an original and major contribution to the body of knowledge on the complex theories of inequalities in health. It is well written and explained in simple terms that encourage the reader to evaluate the original research for themselves."
Australian Social Work
Bartley explains the methods most commonly employed by health inequality researchers and provides a key to understanding the four most widely accepted theories of what lies behind inequality in healthcare: behavioural, psychosocial, material and life-course approaches.
Llewellyn, Agu & Mercer: Sociology for Social Workers
"The authors have carefully designed their textbook to support and extend students learning, showing how sociology is exciting and relevant topic to social work with a variety of service user groups."
They provide:
Dominelli: Sociology for Social Workers
"Dominelli's excellent book examines the neo-liberal political traditions that have resulted in social work becoming such a 'troubled and troubling profession'."
Health Service Journal
Using a broad range of theories, this book outlines the knowledge, skills and values that enable practitioners to respond more effectively to the demands of working in fluid and constantly changing contexts. Underpinning the approach that it takes is the idea that ‘clients’ are citizens with social and human rights which have to be respected.
Barnes & Mercer: Disability
"In Disability, Barnes and Mercer raise the bar for any future discussions of the social model of disability. Their well-grounded work uses the social model to analyse the classic questions of the definition, production, representation, experience, stratification, exclusion, politics and globalization of disability."
Gary L. Albrecht, University of Illinois at Chicago
Barnes and Mercer’s analysis concentrates on disability as a distinctive form of social oppression similar to that experienced by women, minority ethnic and ‘racial’ groups, and lesbians and gay men. Key issues addressed include: theorizing disability; historical and comparative perspectives; experiencing impairment and disability; professional and policy intervention in the lives of disabled people; disability politics, social policy and citizenship; and disability culture.
Barnes, Barton & Oliver: Disability Studies Today
"This edition is edited by the three people who have done more than anyone to establish disability studies as a academic discipline in the UK ... This collection provides a good overview of where disability studies has come from."
Times Higher Education Supplement
Topics covered include: the history of the development of disability studies in Britain and America, key ideas, issues and thinkers, the role of the body, divisions and hierarchies, history, power and identity, work, politics and the disabled peoples' movement, globalization, human rights, research and the role of the academy.
