The Cultural, Definitional, and Institutional Politics of Healthcare
Year: 2025
Type: review
Abstract: This review article examines how politics shape healthcare. In addition to formal law and policy, the politics of healthcare include the larger cultural frameworks that politicize health and illness, rendering some bodies visible while ignoring or erasing others, and the institutions that offer or deny healthcare services. This article highlights both the definitional politics, that is, the contests of power that set the frames of healthcare, and also the politics of implementation and practice that powerfully shape healthcare institutions and experiences. In doing so, this article considers how politics structure the interactions within healthcare systems and around health and illness, and how those engaged in these care relationships must navigate power and politics within these broader organizational and cultural structures.
Source: Annual Review of Sociology
Author: Jennifer A. Reich
Institution: University of Colorado Denver
Language: English
Topic: Health, Medicine and Society
Subfield: General Health Professions
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4408610833