Project Categories

Infertility and Assisted Reproduction from the Development of in vitro Fertilization to the Present: Medicine, Culture, Policy, and Practice

Award Year: 2013 Investigator: Margaret Marsh, Wanda Ronner
The United States, as virtually the only developed nation with no national policy on assisted reproduction, has been called the “wild west” of reproductive medicine. For forty years now, the federal government has refused to fund, regulate, prohibit or approve reproductive technologies or practices such as in vitro fertilization, sperm, egg and embryo donation, or the use of gestational carriers and surrogates.

Famous Patients: "N of 1" Cases and Health Policy Debates

Award Year: 2003 Investigator: Barron Lerner
Health policy debates surface at specific moments for a host of reasons. For example, they may be triggered by technological advances, greater attention to the costs of medical care, or by special interest groups pursuing an agenda. More often, however, a specific medical case or scandal pushes a policy issue into the headlines. Barron H. Lerner, M.D., Ph.D. scrutinizes influential cases in his new project, Famous Patients: N of 1 Cases and Health Policy Debates.

Impatient Consumers: Consumer Culture and the Making of Modern American Medicine

Award Year: 2002 Investigator: Nancy Tomes
Intertwining of modern medicine and modern consumer culture in America has had both positive and negative effects on health and health care, according to Nancy J. Tomes, Ph.D. In her Investigator Award project, Impatient Consumers: Consumer Culture and the Making of Modern American Medicine, Dr. Tomes studies medical autonomy and authority, patients' demands for services, and the tension between professionalism and commercialism.

Pain as Policy: The Social Negotiation of Pain in Medicine, Culture, and Public Policy in Post WWII America

Award Year: 2001 Investigator: Keith Wailoo
There are wide disparities in the treatment of pain, and options for managing it have long been entangled with ideological debates over addiction and dependence. Dr. Wailoo will analyze and describe the complex evolution of pain policy and management practices as well as the principles underlying pain management in America since World War II.

The Construction of Health Risk and the Demand for Disease Prevention, 1945-2000

Award Year: 2000 Investigator: Robert Aronowitz
While many newly defined health risks have elicited major societal and biomedical responses such as screening tests and risk-reducing drugs, others have not. Dr. Aronowitz examines how values and interests of various stakeholders influence how we recognize, name, define, and respond to health risks. His project traces the history of these risks in the U.S. since World War II and seeks to explain how they have been discovered, promoted, and made the object of prevention practices.

Specialization in American Medicine

Award Year: 1997 Investigator: Rosemary Stevens
Dr. Stevens examines specialization in American medicine during the past 25 years in order to shed light on recent trends and choices for the future. She looks at the structure of the medical profession and its response to significant change by examining the evolving roles of the 24 specialty-certifying boards. The project focuses on several contexts of specialty practice and how they have changed. These include: the science base and conceptions of disease