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

Award Year: 2002	Investigator: Nancy Tomes	Budget: $198,050	Categories: History of Medicine and Health Care, Consumerism
Abstract: 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. Although market competition and the explosion of available health care information have led to increased options for patients seeking medical care, Dr. Tomes suggests that consumerism has also produced confusion, undercut medical advances, and contributed to the persistence of unequal access to care. Taking a historical perspective, beginning before the advent of antibiotics and sophisticated technology, she analyzes a range of issues that arose during the twentieth century, from modern medicine's limitations to curb lifestyle-related and chronic illnesses to the explosion of health-related Internet sites and direct-to-consumer drug advertising.