Private complaints and public health: Richard Titmuss on the National Health Service

by Ann Oakley (Editor), Jonathan Barker (Editor)

Overview

Richard Titmuss was one of the 20th century's foremost social policy theorists. This accessible Reader is the first compendium of his work on public health, health promotion and health inequalities. Most of Titmuss's work has been out of print for many years. This volume, like its predecessor, Welfare and wellbeing (The Policy Press, 2001), is important in bringing the work of this highly influential thinker to the attention of a new generation of social policy students and policy makers. It also enhances current debates about how complex societies can best provide for the health of all their citizens.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781861345615
Publisher:	Bristol University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2004
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.77(w) x 9.45(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ann Oakley is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the UCL Social Research Institute. Jonathan Barker directed the Age Concern Research Unit from 1979 to 1986, co-founded the Institute of Gerontology at King’s College and now directs Far-sight Research.

Table of Contents

Sources of extracts
Notes on editors and contributors

Introduction
      Ann Oakley and Jonathan Barker
Prologue: The experience of being a patient
Part 1: Social medicine and social inequality
Commentary by Michael Wadsworth
    1. Infant mortality
    2. The social disease of juvenile rheumatism
    3. Health and social change: the example of rheumatic heart disease
    4. War and disease
Part 2: The National Health Service
Commentary by John R. Ashton
    1. Towards a national hospital service
    2. The policy background
    3. The structure of the NHS in England
    4. The NHS and general practice
    5. The ethics and economics of medical care
Part 3: The sociology of health care
Commentary by Jonathan Barker and Janet Askham
    1. Medical behaviour, science and the NHS
    2. The hospital and its patients
    3. ‘Therapeutic’ drugs
    4. Planning for ageing
Part 4: Health, values and social policy
Commentary by Julian Le Grand
    1. Choice and the welfare state
    2. The gift of blood
    3. Medical ethics and social change in developing societies
    4. Health and the welfare state
Epilogue: Richard Titmuss’s contribution to the sociology of health and illness
      Raymond Illsley

General bibliography
Bibliography of work by Richard Titmuss
Richard Titmuss: further reading
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"It is important that students have access to the original writing of the 'greats' in social policy. This book, combining Titmuss's essays with contemporary commentaries by eminent academics, is an excellent example of how best to do this." Martin Powell, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath

Editorial Reviews

It is important that students have access to the original writing of the 'greats' in social policy. This book, combining Titmuss's essays with contemporary commentaries by eminent academics, is an excellent example of how best to do this. Martin Powell, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath


With the NHS undergoing the most fundamental change in its 56 year history, this book is a timely reminder of important policy dilemmas that we ignore at our peril. This collection of Titmuss's writings brings together remarkably prescient commentaries on aspects of health, health care, and the NHS. British Medical Journal

From the Publisher