This multidisciplinary reference book brings together cutting-edge health and illness topics from around the globe. It offers a range of theoretical and critical perspectives to provide contemporary insights into complex health issues that can offer ways to address inequitable patterns of illness and ill-health.

Editors Contributors Acknowledgements 1. Critical perspectives on health and illness Part I. Medical Contexts 2. The social and cultural histories of medicine 3. Medicalisation 4. Pharmaceuticalisation: Origins, drivers and new directions 5. Governing medical technology 6. Health services and care: Political and affective economies 7. Diagnosis: A social and political phenomenon 8. Population-based screening for detection and prevention 9. Personalised medicine 10. Complementary and alternative medicine Part II. Life Contexts 11: Health inequality 12. Beyond binary categories: A contemporary gender studies perspective on health and illness 13. Sexual orientation and gender identity as determinants of health and illness 14. Reproductive justice: Revitalising critical reproductive health research 15. Ethnicity and health 16. Indigeneity and wellness: Critically understanding the health of Indigenous peoples and communities 17. Disability, technology and health 18. Health and illness among older people: What has age got to do with it? 19. Death, dying and end-of-life care Part III. Shifting Contextual Domains 20. Bioethics: Critical reflections and future directions 21. Digital health 22. Migration and health 23. Medical travel: Critical perspectives 24: Place in health, illness and health care 25. Commercialization: The role of unhealthy commodity industries 26. Towards a critical social science of climate change and health 27. Globalisation and health Index