Open AccessThe New Left and Public Health The Health Policy Advisory Center, Community Organizing, and the Big Business of Health, 1967–1975
Author(s) -
Merlin Chowkwanyun
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
american journal of public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.284
H-Index - 264
eISSN - 1541-0048
pISSN - 0090-0036
DOI - 10.2105/ajph.2009.189985
Subject(s) - public health , health policy , international health , politics , health care , power (physics) , health promotion , political science , public administration , empire , center (category theory) , community health , interpretation (philosophy) , sociology , medicine , law , nursing , programming language , physics , quantum mechanics , computer science , chemistry , crystallography
Soon after its founding in the politically tumultuous late 1960s, the Health Policy Advisory Center (Health/PAC) and its Health/PAC Bulletin became the strategic hub of an intense urban social movement around health care equality in New York City. I discuss its early formation, its intellectual influences, and the analytical framework that it devised to interpret power relations in municipal health care. I also describe Health/PAC's interpretation of health activism, focusing in particular on a protracted struggle regarding Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx. Over the years, the organization's stance toward community-oriented health politics evolved considerably, from enthusiastically promoting its potential to later confronting its limits. I conclude with a discussion of Health/PAC's major theoretical contributions, often taken for granted today, and its book American Health Empire.