Democratizing Medicine
Author | : Keri L. Wolfe |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 274 |
Release | : 2013 |
ISBN-10 | : OCLC:852149069 |
ISBN-13 | : |
Rating | : 4/5 (69 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: In the 1960s and 1970s, a wave of social movements permeated the American landscape; these pushes for change included the community health movement and the women's health movement. In considering these two health movements, I wondered if communities were better served by their new modes of healthcare delivery than they had been in the past? To explore this question more deeply, I choose two New England health centers as case sutdies for my thesis. The first clinic is a community health center in Dorchester, Massachusetts, which started in 1965. The second clinic, the New Hampshire Women's Health Services located in New Hampshire's capital, opened in 1974. I utilized oral interviews, newspaper articles, surveys conducted by non-profit organizations, and the feminist health center's quarterly publication to establish the histories of each health center. I then placed these narratives into the scholarship of each health movement. Although I initially planned on highlighting the avenues for empowerment created in these health movements, the use of a health social movements framework allowed me to underscore an even more prominent commonality between the two centers: the revived emphasis on experiential knowledge in the medical profession in the second half of the twentieth century.