Medical sociologists hold that social conditions generate disparities across a host of health conditions through exposure to a variety of more proximate risk factors. Though distal and proximal causes jointly influence disease, the nature of risk accumulation may differ appreciably by the link...

A large, venerable literature demonstrates the importance of social relationships and social support for health, though much less research examines whether the benefits of social support to mothers extend to children. This paper examines the relationship between mothers' perceptions of...

Mental illness stigma refers to negative stereotypes and prejudices about people with mental illness, and is a widespread phenomenon with damaging social, psychological, and economic consequences. Despite considerable policy attention, mental illness stigma does not appear to have declined...

Concerns regarding sleep disorders in Hmong immigrants in the US emerged when an astonishingly high mortality rate of Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome (SUNDS) was documented in Hmong men. Stress, genetics, and cardiac abnormalities interacting with disordered sleep were hypothesized...

Using the 1957–2011 data from 3682 White non-Hispanic women (297 incident breast cancer cases) in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, United States, we explore the effect of occupation in 1975 (at age 36) on breast cancer incidence up to age 72. Our study is motivated by the paradoxical...

Health habits are linked to nearly half of U.S. and British deaths annually. While a legacy of research suggests that marriage has important positive consequences for health habits, recent work emphasizes that intimate ties can also deter from healthy habits and promote unhealthy habits....

Social studies of science have produced a critical description of science that challenges traditional ideas about “objectivity” and “neutrality”. Given evidence that scientific tools have been used to undermine solid science against the interests of the general public as opposed to...

We examine how a policy aimed at improving patient safety by limiting residents’ work hours brought with it an unintended and unexamined consequence: altered socialization due to modified rites of passage during residency that endangered the stereotypical “Surgical Personality” and created...