Narrative Matters: The Power of the Personal Essay in Health Policy

by Fitzhugh Mullan (Editor), Ellen Ficklen (Editor)

This anthology brings together the personal stories of patients, physicians, policy makers, and others whose writings humanize discussions and deliberations about health policy. Drawn from the popular "Narrative Matters" column in the journal Health Affairs , the essays epitomize the policy narrative, a new genre of writing that explores health policy through the expression of personal experiences. Forty-six articles focus on such topics as the hard financial realities of medical insurance, AIDS, assisted suicide, marketing drugs, genetic engineering, organ transplants, and ethnic and racial disparities in the health care system. The narratives raise ethical and moral issues that are being studied in many of our nation's medical schools. This compelling collection provides important insight into the human dimensions of health care and health policy.

Genres: Essays

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 7, 2006

Reviews

[Koharjones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book rocks. "Is it about socialized medicine?" a guy seated next to me on a plane asked.
Socialized, social, society. It's about what we can do as a society to make people healthier. We've only got so many dollars to spend on health. How do we use them? What does it take to create a healthy society? A good health system? What are the shortfalls of our current system? What can we learn from the experiences of doctors, patients, and policy makers about what's wrong, and how to fix it?
This is a compilation of primarily first person narratives from the "Narrative Matters" column in the policy journal "Health Affairs." Policy narratives use people's stories to make policy points--whether it's Colorado's Governor Lamb discussing his public feud with the head of a university transplant program over the choice between using public dollars to fund a world class transplant program in Denver or providing basic coverage for everyone in the state, or a New Mexico physician reflecting on the speeding laws, alcohol use and distribution of doctors in his state that led him to unsuccessfully attempt to resuscitate a boy whose mother and brother were already killed in a headon collision with two (now dead) speeding drunk teenagers, while the father looked on screaming, "WAKE UP!"
We need to wake up as a society and address the factors that lead to bad health. This book does a great job of pointing out the systemic changes, as told through individual stories, that need to take place to make a healthier society.
Socialized medicine? No. But what we can do as a society to make us healtheir.
Good to read one story at a time, for anyone vaguely interested in health.

[audrey wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a collection of narratives about health policy, medical malpractice, and ethics that lead to questions about the way our healthcare system is structured.
I liked the way narratives were the driving force of this policy conversations, especially because they are often ignored when discussing health.
The themes of this book are important for continued discussion to promote health and wellbeing in all stages of life and parts of society.
It definitely was a dense book and would be best enjoyed one section or piece at a time.

[Diogenes Grief · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very nice collection of narrative-medicine memoirs meant to push towards greater public awareness of healthcare issues in the US.