Project Categories

Political Analysis: Applications to Health Care and Health Policy

Award Year: 2000 Investigator: Rudolf Klein, Theodore Marmor
Professors Marmor and Klein seek to improve the understanding of health care policymaking while contributing to a more informed discussion of options among academics and policymakers. Building on their earlier work, they will focus on the politics of decision making in the widest sense: the constraints and opportunities created by existing institutions, administrative capacities, and the structure of interests in the health policy arena.

The Influence of History and Tradition on Public Health Strategies: A Nationally Comparative Approach to the AIDS Epidemic

Award Year: 2000 Investigator: Peter Baldwin
This project explores why the public health response to the AIDS epidemic has varied so greatly in industrialized nations. By setting the approach to the AIDS epidemic in a broader historical context, Dr. Baldwin analyzes the factors that have determined AIDS responses in five countries - the U.S., France, Germany, Britain and Sweden.

Health and Megacities: A Neglected Dimension of U.S. Health Policy

Award Year: 1999 Investigator: Victor Rodwin
This project undertakes a comparative analysis of public health infrastructure, health care delivery systems, and health in the four principal mega-cities of the industrially advanced world. Dr.

National Health Insurance and American Exceptionalism: A Comparative Historical Analysis

Award Year: 1999 Investigator: Jill Quadagno
The lack of national health insurance is the most distinctive feature of America's welfare state, the prime example of a larger historic issue known as American Exceptionalism. Three presidents (Truman, Nixon, and Clinton) championed universal access to health care but failed to win congressional approval of their proposals. Yet, Medicare and Medicaid, which provide benefits for limited constituencies, were enacted. Using the comparative method, Dr.

Disease Prevention as Social Change: A Comparative Study of Public Health Policymaking in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and France

Award Year: 1994 Investigator: Constance Nathanson
This project explores social and political factors, which foster or impede effective public health policymaking, and the development of a sociological theory of change in parameters of health and disease. Historical and demographic research indicates that public health policies play a significant role in mortality decline and that these policies are the outcome of identifiable social and political processes. Dr.