This book examines the relationship between media and medicine, considering the fundamental role of news coverage in constructing wider cultural understandings of health and disease. The authors advance the notion of ‘biomediatization’ and demonstrate how health knowledge is co-produced through connections between dispersed sites and forms of expertise. The chapters offer an innovative combination of media content analysis and ethnographic data on the production and circulation of health news, drawing on work with journalists, clinicians, health officials, medical researchers, marketers, and audiences. The volume provides students and scholars with unique insight into the significance and complexity of what health news does and how it is created.

Used across the public health field, this is the leading text in the area, focusing on the context, participants and processes of making health policy.

A public health crisis is gripping the UK. Improvements in life expectancy have stalled, health inequalities have widened, obesity and alcohol misuse are placing an increasing strain on health services and urban air pollution is now widely recognised as a serious health hazard. COVID-19 revealed the weaknesses of the UK's public health system, once thought to be among the best in the world. Against this background, this book examines the organisational and political barriers to an effective public health system showcased through the UK. It urges that what is needed is a new social contract, in which health policy is truly public.

This book examines the relationship between media and medicine. Drawing on insights from anthropology, linguistics, and media studies, it considers the fundamental role of news coverage in constructing wider cultural understandings of health and disease. The authors advance the notion of ‘biomediatization’ and demonstrate how health knowledge is co-produced through connections between dispersed sites of knowledge making and through multiple forms of expertise. The chapters offer an innovative combination of media content analysis and ethnographic data on the production and circulation of health news, drawing on work with journalists, clinicians, health officials, medical researchers, marketers, and audiences. New to this edition are new case studies, in particular about the COVID-19 pandemic. The first case study looks at pharmaceutical and biotech news, and how journalists portray the flow of information across the boundaries between science and business. The next two case studies examine pandemic news, beginning with the 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic and continuing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The final case study examines the treatment of race and racism in health news, looking at the ways it interacts with cultural constructions of health citizenship, and the forces that have produced a shift from deracialization of health news to a much stronger focus on race and racism in contemporary health news. This book is ideal for undergraduate students and scholars across the social sciences, health sciences, cultural studies, and journalism.

“This is the best textbook on health policy.” Prof Uta Lehmann, Director, School of Public Health, University of Western Cape, South Africa “The third edition of this excellent text reinforces its position as the best text that applies public policy concepts and theories to health policy.” Prof Martin Powell, Professor of Health and Social Policy, School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham, UK “This book is essential reading for anyone wanting guidance on managing the politics of the health policy process.” Prof Jeremy Shiffman, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Health Policy, Johns Hopkins University, USA Described as the best book in its field, this extensively updated third edition of Making Health Policy provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of health policy, its political nature and its processes at country and global levels. Written by a large and diverse group of leading experts, this clear and accessible book addresses the “how” of health policy making in a range of settings. This fully revised edition: • Responds to the movement to ‘decolonise’ and broaden the practice of global health and its related scholarship • Provides new examples of health policy processes that bring additional theoretical perspectives and empirical studies from researchers outside North America and Europe • Responds to developments in health policy such as the ecological crisis, the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of social media as well as having greater treatment of policy related to the social and commercial determinants of health • Includes new chapters on the role of the values that underpin health policy debates and on how local policy is shaped by national, regional and global influences and organisations. Making Health Policy is the ideal resource for students of public health and health policy, public health practitioners and policy makers. Authors: Kent Buse, Nicholas Mays, Manuela Colombini, Alec Fraser, Mishal Khan and Helen Walls. Understanding Public Health is an innovative series published by Open University Press in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where it is used as a key learning resource for postgraduate programmes. It provides self-directed learning covering the major issues in public health affecting low-, middle- and high-income countries. Series Editors: Rosalind Plowman and Nicki Thorogood.

As the demand for health services rises & the pressure on these services grows, decisions about the use of scarce resources are becoming even more difficult to make & more explicit. This text provides healthcare managers with the knowledge they need.

""Making Health Policy" is an excellent and easily accessible introduction to its subject and thus of particular interest to all those who seek to influence health policy...this book is highly recommended for all who seek to better understand the policy process and who seek to influence health policy at a sub-national, national, or international level." - "Studies in Family Planning." "This book is an excellent choice for an international health policy course- it is engaging, practical and up to date and provides a great core. I highly recommend it!" - Susan D. Foster, Professor of International Health, Boston University School of Public Health. "May I congratulate Nicholas Mays, Kent Buse and Gill Walt on their excellent health policy book which we are finding most useful in our health policy and management course here at the Karolinska and which I will also use in the masters in health management course in Bergen" - Dr John Ovretveit, Director of Research, The Karolinska Institute Medical Management Centre, Stockholm, and Professor of Health Policy and Management, Bergen University Faculty of Medicine, Norway.; Surprisingly little guidance is available to public health practitioners who wish to understand how issues get onto policy agendas, how policy makers treat evidence and why some policy initiatives are implemented while others languish. This book views power and process as integral to understanding policy and focuses on the three key elements in policy making: the context, the actors and the processes. It is a guide for those who wish to improve their skills in navigating and managing the health policy process, irrespective of the health issue or setting. The book examines: Policy analysis, Power, Private and public sectors, Policy makers, Policy implementation, and, Research and policy.