Subtitle: A Practical Guide
Author: Christie W. Kiefer
Subject: Health & Medicine/Sociology
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2776-7
Paperback ISBN 0-8135-2777-5
Pages: 224 pp.
Description: A guide for health professionals and community activists to the social, cultural, and political issues faced by the poor

"A beautifully and humanely rendered 'must read' for anyone who cares about health care for the poor. Christie Kiefer shows us the people behind the poverty statistics and the intimate interdependence between poverty and health. He drives home the need for approaches that stress individual and community empowerment and reduce the power gap between health care 'providers' and 'consumers.' A truly exceptional book!"-Meredith Minkler, University of California, Berkeley

"A cogent analysis of poverty in the United States.... An essential, highly readable resource for both students and health workers." -Ruth Sidel, author of Keeping Women and Children Last: America's War on the Poor

Christie Kiefer vividly brings home the meaning of poverty in peoples' lives as he examines both their access to-and their lack of-health care.

Aimed at both students and professionals in the field, this book argues that individuals serving the poor have the means and obligation to address the root causes of ill health of the poor, not just the symptoms. These causes, Kiefer argues, are overwhelmingly social and political. In a ringing indictment of the factors that perpetuate poverty, he declares that the work of healing at its best must include advocacy.

Health Work with the Poor offers to both health workers and activists a wealth of practical information. Kiefer's trenchant analysis of the factors that help cause and perpetuate poverty offers students the needed intellectual framework not only to accomplish short-term change but also to strive toward long-term social advocacy. Each chapter ends with a set of discussion questions-a real boon for instructors. Appendices on Internet resources for the study of poverty and on a proposed program detailing how to teach health workers in a way that promotes social awareness make this book a valuable resource for courses on poverty and health. It will also be an indispensable manual for all those who work with the poor.

Some topics covered in Health Work with the Poor:

· The difficulties and biases a middle-class health worker will experience when working with the poor

· The social, cultural, and economic factors that contribute to the poor's constantly declining access to health resources

· Why the present-day "reforming" of the U.S. welfare system is bound to fail

· The evolution and role of community health centers

· How individuals can facilitate community involvement to improve the health and lives of the poor

Christie Kiefer is a professor of anthropology at the University of California-San Francisco, where he has taught in the School of Medicine for 30 years. He is the author of The Mantle of Maturity: A History of Ideas About Character Development and Refuge of the Honored: Social Organization in a Japanese Retirement Community.