Main description:

Objective analysis and comprehensive data on Americans' attitudes about key health-care issues

Over the years, hundreds of polls have been conducted on health and health-care related topics, but until now there has been no reference tool to help students, researchers, and policy makers make sense of the data.

American Public Opinion and Health Care brings together findings from more than 200 national opinion surveys conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Harvard University's School of Public Health, and other institutes and polling and media organizations.

After years of intensive data gathering, the authors have compiled an in-depth, non-partisan look at Americans' attitudes about a range of current and critical health care issues. Twenty-one chapters combine unbiased survey data and analysis. The concluding chapter discusses the implications based on public opinion trends for the future of U.S. health policy in each of the areas discussed in the preceding chapters.

Major topics addressed include:

General attitudes, trust, and priorities
Current critical health-care issues, such as quality, costs, the pharmaceutical industry, and reform efforts
Specific health topics, such as HIV/AIDS, abortion, stem-cell research, end-of-life, obesity, infectious diseases, and pandemic flu
Views by race and gender, and disparities in health care and coverage
The importance of health care in recent elections and implications for the future of health care and policy in the United States

Substantial trend data, covering the 1960s to the present, will allow researchers to get a sense of how opinions have changed over time. Chapters also look at how various groups in American society differ in their views and how those views compare with the citizens of other countries. This reference is highly recommended for public libraries and academic libraries, including but not limited to institutions with programs in medicine, public health, and government.