In Pursuit of Health Equity: A History of Latin American Social Medicine (Studies in Social Medicine)

Throughout Latin America, social medicine has been widely recognized for its critical perspectives on mainstream understandings of health and for its progressive policy achievements. Nevertheless, it has been an elusive subject: hard to define, with puzzling historical discontinuities and misconceptions about its origins. Drawing on a vast archive and with an ambitious narrative scope that transcends national borders, Eric D. Carter offers the first comprehensive intellectual and political history of the social medicine movement in Latin America, from the early twentieth century to the present day. While maintaining a consistent focus on health equity, social medicine has evolved with changing conditions in the region. Carter shows how it shaped early Latin American welfare states, declined with the dominance of midcentury technocratic health planning, resurged in the 1970s in solidarity against authoritarian regimes, and later resisted neoliberal reforms of the health sector. He centers socialist and anarchist doctors, political exiles, intellectuals, populist leaders, and rebellious technocrats from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and other countries who responded to and shaped a dynamic political environment around health equity. The lessons from this history will inform new thinking about how to achieve health equity in the twenty-first century. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: The Pursuit of Health Equity Chapter One. Roots: The Origins of Social Medicine in Latin America Chapter Two. Networks: How Social Medicine Traveled Internationally, 1920s–1940s Chapter Three. Politics: Social Medicine and Health Reform in Chile Chapter Four. Fragmentation: The Politics of Health and the Welfare State in Argentina Chapter Five. Hiatus: Modernization and the Fading of Social Medicine in the Early Cold War Chapter Six. Revival: The Second Wave of Latin American Social Medicine Chapter Seven. Resistance: Social Medicine and Its Impact, 1990s–2000s Conclusion: Making Sense of Latin American Social Medicine Notes Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y "Drawing on vast source materials, and with an ambitious narrative scope that transcends national borders, Eric D. Carter offers the first comprehensive intellectual and political history of the social medicine movement in Latin America, from the early twentieth century to the present day"-- Provided by publisher