Health & Healthcare Policy

This page lists publications that grew out of a few different projects: Long-term research with uninsured American in five regions of the country; work with folks struggling with substance (ab)use; and US responses to public health crises including Zika and Ebola.


2020 Why ‘Waging War’ on Coronavirus is a Dangerous Metaphor. Common Dreams.

2020 Hospitals Need to Prepare for Life and Death Decisions During the Coronavirus Pandemic. Boston Globe.

2019. The Opioid Crisis and the Infrastructure of Social Capital. International Journal of Drug Policy.

2018 Unrequited Engagement: Misadventures in Advocating for Medicaid Expansion. American Anthropologist. 120(3): 601-609.

2017 Stratified Citizenship Before and After the ACA: Uninsured in America, Ten Years Later. In Unequal Coverage: The Experience of Health Care Reform in the US. Eds. Heide Castaneda and Jessica Mulligan. NY: NYU Press.

2018 Involuntary Commitment of Drug Users Wrong ApproachCommonWealth.

2017 There’s Still an On-going Zika Crisis in BrazilHuffington Post.

2017 For Mississippi, the Senate Bill Would Spell Disaster. The Hattiesburg American.

2017 The GOP’s Comprehensive Plan to Undermine Women’s Health CareHuffington Post.

2017 Repeal and Replace is a Women’s IssueOur Bodies Ourselves.

2016 Mental Healthcare and the 2016 ElectionThe Hill.

2016 Beyond OpportunityDemocracy: A Journal of Ideas.

2016 Uninsured in Texas, Then and NowHealth Affairs 13(9).

2016 Pennsatucky’s Teeth and the Persistence of Class. In Feminist Perspectives on Orange is the New Black: Thirteen Critical Essays. Pp. 128-139 in April Householder and Adrienne Trier-Bieniek (eds.). McFarland Press.

2016 Where are They Now?: Challenges of Health Care and Housing InstabilitiesCommunity Catalyst Blog.

2016 The Social Implications of ZikaThe Hill.

2016 Poor and homeless face discrimination under America’s flawed housing voucher system.  The Conversation.

2016 Faces of the Newly Insured. Commonwealth Fund (photo essay with Adam Cohen.)

2016 What We Actually Know About the Opioid Crisis Might Not Be What You ThinkThe Hill.

2016 Questioning the ‘Opioid Crisis.’ MetroWest Daily News.

2016 Jamie Shupe’s Victory Over Binaries Run Amok. Daily Kos.

2016 If We’re Really in the Midst of an “Opioid Epidemic,” We’re Reacting in Just the Wrong WayThe Influence  (Re-printed in Salon.com and in Alternet.)

2016 The Cavity in Health Insurance Coverage: Oral HealthThe Conversation.

2016 Like the “Girl Who Hides a Razor Blade in Her Mouth,” Coerced Addiction Treatment Has Many VictimsThe Influence.

2016 Maternal Health and Rights Deserve Their DayOur Bodies Ourselves.

2016 A Serious Response is Needed, But Let’s Not “Wage War” on ZikaCommonDreams.

2016 Health is Where the Home Is. Truthout.

2015 Involuntary Hospitalization of Drug Users Is Bad PolicyTruthout.

2015 The Worst of Pinktober “Breast Cancer Awareness” ProductsBitchMedia.

2015 The State(s) of the Affordable Care ActTruthout.

2014 Why Brain Science Won’t Cure PovertyThe Conversation.

2014 Why Can’t the US Respond to the Ebola Outbreak Without “Waging War” and “Sending Troops.” CommonDreams.

2014 America’s Shameful Ebola Ignorance: The Troubling Truth About Our Attitude Towards the VirusSalon.com.

2014 What Pennsatucky’s Teeth Tell Us About Class in AmericaBitchMedia.

2014 “Medicalization of the Death and Other Penalties.” Truthout.org.

2014 “Scripting Suffering in an Age of Personal Responsibility,” Contexts 13(2): 38-43.

2011 (with Marilyn Delle Donne Proulx) “Lessons for Women’s Health from the Massachusetts Reform: Affordability, Transitions and Choice,” Women’s Health Issues 21(1): 1-5.

2010 “Young, Sick, and Part-Time: The Vulnerability of Youth and the New American Job Market,” in Peter Conrad, ed. Sociology of Health and Illness, 8th edition. Worth Publ. Pp. 347-353.

2009 “A Right to Health Care, Response to Andrew Busch,” Claremont Review of Books, 9(4).

2009 “Ten Reasons Why Health Care Reform is a Massachusetts Women’s Issue.” Publication of Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights, Suffolk University. (300 copies distributed by the Massachusetts Health Council, March 2009.)

2008 Women and Health Care Reform in Massachusetts: Policy Brief,” publication of Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights, Suffolk University.

2007 Barriers to Health Care for Women who have been Incarcerated (with Maureen Norton-Hawk), publication of Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights, Suffolk University.

2006 (with Rushika Fernandopulle), Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity, University of California Press. 2nd edition with new Afterward

2005 Threadbare: Holes in America’s Health Care Safety Net (with Catherine Hoffman), Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, Washington DC.

2005 (with Rushika Fernandopulle) “Sick Out of Luck: What It Means to Be Uninsured in America,” Contexts 4(3): 27-32.

2004 At the Edge: Near-Elderly Americans Talk About Health Insurance, Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, Washington DC.