Siplon (political science, Saint Michael's College) identifies the three key factors of any policy formation analysis as the role of organization, the role of values, and the problem of changing distributions and inflicting costs on affected groups and society in general. She applies this understanding to an exploration of several policy areas and their defining struggles related to the AIDS epidemic in the United States. The actions and impacts of actors inside and outside of government are explored in the cases of new drug policy, blood policy, harm reduction versus abstinence as AIDS prevention models, the Ryan White CARE Act, and AIDS as a foreign policy issue. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Brazil has occupied a central role in the access to medicines movement, especially with respect to drugs used to treat those with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). How and why Brazil succeeded in overcoming powerful political and economic interests, both at home and abroad, to roll-out and sustain treatment represents an intellectual puzzle. In this book, Matthew Flynn traces the numerous challenges Brazil faced in its efforts to provide essential medicines to all of its citizens. Using dependency theory, state theory, and moral underpinnings of markets, Flynn delves deeper into the salient factors contributing to Brazil’s successes and weaknesses, including control over technology, creation of political alliances, and instrumental use of normative frameworks and effectively explains the ability of countries to fulfill the prescription drug needs of its population versus the interests and operations of the global pharmaceutical industry Pharmaceutical Autonomy and Public Health in Latin America is one of the only books to provide an in-depth account of the challenges that a developing country, like Brazil, faces to fulfill public health objectives amidst increasing global economic integration and new international trade agreements. Scholars interested in public health issues, HIV/AIDS, and human rights, but also to social scientists interested in Latin America and international political economy will find this an original and thought provoking read.

When Barack Obama entered the White House, he faced numerous urgent issues. Despite the citizens' demand for strong presidential leadership, President Obama, following a long-standing precedent for the development and implementation of major policies, appointed administrators--so-called policy czars--charged with directing the response to the nation's most pressing crises. Combining public administration and political science approaches to the study of the American presidency and institutional politics, Justin S. Vaughn and José D. Villalobos argue that the creation of policy czars is a strategy for combating partisan polarization and navigating the federal government's complexity. They present a series of in-depth analyses of the appointment, role, and power of various czars: the energy czar in the mid-1970s, the drug czar in the late 1980s, the AIDS czar in the 1990s, George W. Bush's trio of national security czars after 9/11, and Obama's controversial czars for key domestic issues. Laying aside inflammatory political rhetoric, Vaughn and Villalobos offer a sober, empirical analysis of what precisely constitutes a czar, why Obama and his predecessors used czars, and what role they have played in the modern presidency.

This edited volume analyzes African state responses to the AIDS epidemic. Institutionally weak, limited in resources and lacking power in the international system, the African state has been characterized as inefficient, corrupt and illegitimate. The volume questions how aspects of the African state have affected policy responses to AIDS. It highlights how African states must initiate, develop and/or implement the long-term policy solutions necessary to combat AIDS. It employs empirical studies from the international and national arena to illustrate why some African states have been able (and willing) to address AIDS while others have not. Contributions analyze how international actors, civil society organizations, state ideology, patriarchy and state capacity have influenced policies to fight AIDS. Examining AIDS policies through the prism of African state development and linkages to domestic and international actors, this book provides a nuanced understanding of the variety of responses to AIDS in Africa.

How best to manage risk involving multi-valued human biological materials is the overarching theme of this book, which draws on the sourcing and supply of blood as a case study. Blood has ethical, social, scientific and commercial value. This multi-valuing process presents challenges in terms of managing risk, therefore making it ultimately a matter for political responsibility. This is highlighted through an examination of the circumstances that led to HIV blood contamination episodes in the US, England and France, as well as their consequences. The roles of scientific expertise and innovation in managing risks to the blood system are also analysed, as is the increased use of precautionary and legal strategies in the post-HIV blood contamination era. Finally, consideration is given to a range of policy and legal strategies that should underpin effective risk governance involving multi-valued human biological materials.

This book examines why the US and Canada have produced such divergent policy outcomes in affording rights to their gay and lesbian citizens. Smith's contribution will prove vital as movements for lesbian and gay rights continue to recast the social landscape in North America and beyond.

The history, symptoms, prevention, and current issues surrounding HIV and AIDS are discussed, along with a focus on special populations struggling with the disease. Once thought to be a disease of homosexuals and drug abusers, AIDS has now impacted people across cultures, genders, and sexual orientations. Despite activism, new research, and treatments, many people are still dying from this disease. HIV/AIDS offers a comprehensive, one-volume resource that traces the history of the disease, and discusses prevention, along with current research and treatment. It examines issues such as care giving, health care settings, human rights, pregnancy, and insurance. The incidence and prognosis for the disease among special populations, as well as their needs and struggles, are covered in detail. These groups include: drug and alcohol abusers, the gay and lesbian community, minority communities, pediatric patients, prisoners, senior citizens, and women. With education the key to both prevention and care of those infected, this volume is an invaluable resource for students and general readers.

In the 1980s, as HIV/AIDS ravaged queer communities and communities of color in the United States and beyond, a straight white teenager named Ryan White emerged as the face of the epidemic. Diagnosed with hemophilia at birth, Ryan contracted HIV through contaminated blood products. In 1985, he became a household name after he was barred from attending his Indiana middle school. As Ryan appeared on nightly news broadcasts and graced the covers of popular magazines, he was embraced by music icons and well-known athletes, achieving a curious kind of stardom. Analyzing his struggle and celebrity, Paul M. Renfro's powerful biography grapples with the contested meanings of Ryan's life, death, and afterlives. As Renfro argues, Ryan's fight to attend school forced the American public to reckon with prevailing misconceptions about the AIDS epidemic. Yet his story also reinforced the hierarchies at the heart of the AIDS crisis. Because the "innocent" Ryan had contracted HIV "through no fault of his own," as many put it, his story was sometimes used to blame presumably "guilty" populations for spreading the virus. Reexamining Ryan's story through this lens, Renfro reveals how the consequences of this stigma continue to pervade policy and cultural understandings of HIV/AIDS today.

Bringing together the experience, perspective and expertise of Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Arthur Kleinman, Reimagining Global Health provides an original, compelling introduction to the field of global health. Drawn from a Harvard course developed by their student Matthew Basilico, this work provides an accessible and engaging framework for the study of global health. Insisting on an approach that is historically deep and geographically broad, the authors underline the importance of a transdisciplinary approach, and offer a highly readable distillation of several historical and ethnographic perspectives of contemporary global health problems. The case studies presented throughout Reimagining Global Health bring together ethnographic, theoretical, and historical perspectives into a wholly new and exciting investigation of global health. The interdisciplinary approach outlined in this text should prove useful not only in schools of public health, nursing, and medicine, but also in undergraduate and graduate classes in anthropology, sociology, political economy, and history, among others.

In the face of life-threatening news, how does our view of life change—and what do we do it transform it? Remaking a Life uses the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a lens to understand how women generate radical improvements in their social well being in the face of social stigma and economic disadvantage. Drawing on interviews with nationally recognized AIDS activists as well as over one hundred Chicago-based women living with HIV/AIDS, Celeste Watkins-Hayes takes readers on an uplifting journey through women’s transformative projects, a multidimensional process in which women shift their approach to their physical, social, economic, and political survival, thereby changing their viewpoint of “dying from” AIDS to “living with” it. With an eye towards improving the lives of women, Remaking a Life provides techniques to encourage private, nonprofit, and government agencies to successfully collaborate, and shares policy ideas with the hope of alleviating the injuries of inequality faced by those living with HIV/AIDS everyday.