Representing Health addresses the importance of the media in shaping and reflecting public perceptions and attitudes to health and illness. Bringing together contributions from a variety of academic disciplines, this lively text examines contemporary theoretical debates and analyzes media as diverse as television, cinema, literature, print media and the Internet. Centring around themes of 'virtual' bodies, audiences, representations and public health, it examines discourses of sexuality, gender, race, disability, childhood, medico-moral panics, regulation and governmentality.

Traditional and social media are used extensively in terms of public health today. Studies show that social media works much better than other follow-up systems, leading it to become a modern and somewhat new tool for disease coverage and information discovery. The current state of the representation of health and medicine in the media is an important factor to analyze in the field of health communication, especially amidst the onset of a global pandemic. The ways in which the media discusses health, the campaigns that are used, and the ethics around this role of media and journalism are defining factors in the spread of information regarding health. The Handbook of Research on Representing Health and Medicine in Modern Media is a crucial reference that discusses health communication within two contexts: in terms of the media and journalists presenting critical health information and in terms of media literacy and information retrieval methods of media consumers through modern digital channels. The main purpose of these chapters is the development of critical thinking about health presentations and health communication issues in the media by presenting a discussion of the issues that will contribute to this vital view of health, medicine, and diseases in the media. The primary topics highlighted in this book are infectious diseases in the media, campaigning, media ethics, digital platforms such as television and social media in health communication, and the media’s impact on individuals and society. This book is ideal for journalists, reporters, researchers, practitioners, public health officials, social media analysts, researchers, academicians, and students looking for information on how health and medicine are presented in the media, the channels used for information delivery, and the impact of the media on health and medicine.

From concerns about an ‘autism epidemic’ to the MMR vaccine crisis, autism is a source of peculiar fascination in the contemporary media. Author Stuart Murray, himself the parent of an autistic child, contends that for all the coverage, autism rarely emerges from the various images we produce of it as a comprehensible way of being in the world—instead occupying a succession of narrative spaces as a source of fascination and wonder. A refreshing analysis and evaluation of autism within contemporary society and culture, Representing Autism establishes the autistic presence as a way by which we might more fully articulate our understanding of those with the condition, and what it means to be a human. “This is an outstanding volume of empathetic scholarship. . . . Representing Autism is a truly significant piece of cultural criticism about one of the defining conditions of our time.”—Mark Osteen, Loyola College

Drawing from the perspectives of a variety of disciplines, this innovative text is unlike any others of its kind. Health Policy Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Third Edition analyzes current U.S. health policy and proposes various alternatives for developing future health policy without pushing a single solution set--rather, it considers the viewpoints of economics, political science, management, communications, technology, and public health.

In times of rapid change and constrained resources, measures that are important, focused, and reliable are vital. However there is an overabundance of measures available for evaluating various aspects of population health and previous efforts to simplify existing sets to meet the needs of all decision makers have been unsuccessful. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop to explore the status and uses of measures and measurement in the work of improving population health. Participants explored existing and emerging population health metric sets and characteristics of metrics necessary for stakeholder action across multiple sectors. This report summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.