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The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology is a follow-up to two earlier volumes of this book and the latest work currently in Wiley Blackwell’s Companion series. The goal is to bring together leading scholars in medical sociology to provide discussion of the most important issues and review the current research in the field. This edition follows this practice by providing chapters on health-related topics of significant interest. The contributors are from Canada, China, Singapore, Sweden, the UK, and the US, who were carefully selected to write chapters on topics in which they were recognized experts.

As will be seen in several chapters, this book was organized and written during the 2019–20 COVID-19 global pandemic. Consequently, many of these chapters take the effects of COVID-19 into account. One chapter (Chapter 21) on newly emerging diseases by Ron Barrett (Macalester College), a recipient of the Wellcome Medal from the Royal Anthropological Institute in the UK, focuses directly on COVID-19 with an authoritative account of the pandemic. Part I of this volume begins with a chapter by Terrence Hill (Texas-San Antonio), myself, Jane McLeod (Indiana University), and Fred Hafferty (Mayo Clinic). It analyzes how medical sociology’s former subfields of sociology in medicine and the sociology of medicine have changed as its subject matter has enlarged and expanded well beyond these two initial categories. Each of these co-authors addresses a particular area of contemporary research. Hill is one of the most prolific scholars in medical sociology, McLeod is Provost Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Indiana University and recipient of both the James R. Greenley and Leonard I. Pearlin awards for distinguished contributions to the Sociology of Mental Health, and Hafferty is a past chair of the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association who is currently at the College of Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He has spent his career as a sociologist working in medical institutions.

Next, I join Graham Scambler (University College London and Surrey University, UK) to provide an overview of sociological theory in medical sociology. Scambler is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, UK, and editor emeritus of the journal Social Theory & Health. Medical sociology’s evolution from an applied and atheoretical field to a subdiscipline that not only draws from theory in sociology but contributes to it is noted. Current theories in the field are reviewed.

Chapter 3 focuses on research methods, which is a new yet important topic for this volume. This chapter is written by Joseph Wolfe (University of Alabama at Birmingham), Shawn Bauldry (Purdue University), and Cindy Cain (University of Alabama at Birmingham) – each of whom is an experienced and well-regarded methodologist. Next is Chapter 4 on the important relationship between culture and health in a global context. Stella Quah of the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore writes this chapter. She is past chair of the International Sociological Association (ISA) Research Council, past president of the ISA Research Committee on Health Sociology, and editor-in-chief of the 2^nd edition of the International Encyclopedia of Public Health. Altogether, four past presidents of ISA’s Research Committee on Health Sociology are authors of chapters in this volume (Cockerham, Gabe, Quah, and Quesnel-Vallée). The remaining introductory chapter is on bioethics by Kristina Orfali (Columbia University) and Raymond De Vries (University of Michigan). Orfali is a Fellow of the Institute for Social and Economic Research & Policy at Columbia and DeVries is Associate Director of the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine at Michigan,

The section (Part II) on theoretical approaches in medical sociology follows. Sarah Nettleton (University of York, UK) provides an update of research on the sociology of the body. Nettleton is a former senior editor of the journal Social Science & Medicine. Adele Clarke of the University of California Medical Center at San Francisco and her colleagues at U.C. San Francisco, Melanie Jeske, and Janet Shim, along with Laura Mamo at San Francisco State University reexamine biomedicalization theory in Chapter 7 on a return visit to the theory decades later. Clarke, the leading proponent of biomedicalization theory has received numerous prizes and awards from professional organizations, including the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association and the Societies for Medical Anthropology, the Study of Social Sciences, and the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Next (Chapter 8) is an update of health lifestyle theory by the editor with a focus on the significance of social structures in influencing the health-related behavior of individuals. This chapter is followed by a new chapter on life course theory by Andrea Willson and Kim Shuey of the University of Western Ontario in Canada. They have published substantial work in this area. Chapter 10 takes the next journey into theory with a chapter by Lijun Song and Yvonne Chin (Vanderbilt University) on social capital and health. Song is a former student of Nan Lin, a major figure in social capital theory who co-authored a chapter on social capital with her in earlier versions of this book.

Part III addresses health and social inequality, which is a focus of several studies in medical sociology. The section begins with a topic of major importance for medical sociologists, that of health and social class, by two experienced medical sociologists, Jarron Saint Onge (University of Kansas) and Patrick Krueger (University of Colorado-Denver). Next is Chapter 12 on health and gender by Ellen Annandale (University of York, UK). She is a former editor-in-chief of Social Science & Medicine and past vice-president of the European Sociological Association and the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Health Sociology. Chapter 13 presents a European view of health, ethnicity, and race by two noted researchers in this area, Hannah Brady (Uppsala University, Sweden) and James Nazroo (University of Manchester, UK). A European perspective is often missing from similar accounts by American medical sociologists, and this chapter fills that void. Turning, however, to the US, Christy Erving and Lacee Satcher (Vanderbilt University) examine African American health, while senior scholars Ronald and Jaqueline Angel (University of Texas-Austin) look at Latinos and equity in access to health care. Both chapters are especially relevant topics today in the US. The concluding chapter in this section is on social policy and health inequality by Amélie Quesnel-Vallée, Jaunathan Bilodeau, and Kaitlin Conway of McGill University in Canada. Quesnel-Vallée holds the Canada Research Chair in Policies and Health Inequalities at McGill, is past president of International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Health Sociology, and has received awards from the American Sociological Association, the American Public Health Association, and the Population Health Association of America.

In Part IV, the emphasis is on health and various types of social relationships. Chapter 17 is on health and family, which is a new but highly significant topic for this volume. It is written by Mieke Thomeer and Kirsten Ostergren Clark of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Thomeer is Deputy Editor of the Journal of Marriage and Family, on the editorial board of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and is Teaching Committee Chair for the American Sociological Association’s Medical Sociology Section. Chapter 18 is an updated chapter on health and religion by the well-known scholar Ellen Idler (Emory University). She is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Sociology at Emory and Director of the Religion and Public Health Collaborative. She also is a Fellow and past chair of the Behavioral and Social Sciences Section of the Gerontological Society of America and the American Sociological Association’s Section on Aging and the Life Course.

Next is a chapter (Chapter 19) on health and migration by a new scholar Elyas Bakhtiari (College of William & Mary) that investigates the increasingly important topic of the health of migrants by an expert on this topic. The section concludes with a chapter on another new subject for this volume, that of mental health, by Teresa Scheid (University of North Carolina-Charlotte). She is a well-known researcher in the sociology of mental health and a senior editor with Eric Wright of the third edition of the Handbook for the Study of Mental Health: Social Contexts, Theories, and Systems.

Part V contains two chapters on health and disease. One is by Barrett on emerging infectious diseases described earlier in this preface for its emphasis on COVID-19 and the other (Chapter 22) by Alexandra C. H. Nowakowski (Florida State University College of Medicine) is on chronic illness. As someone who has experienced a chronic illness over her life course, Nowakowski brings an insightful and personal view to this chapter.

The final section is Part VI on health care delivery. It begins with a chapter by rising scholars Jason Adam Wasserman (Oakland University Beaumont School of Medicine) and Brian Hinote (Middle Tennessee State University) on health professions and occupations. Hinote and Wasserman are co-authors of Social and Behavioral Science for Health Professionals. Another rising scholar is Hyeyoung Oh Nelson (University of Colorado-Denver), who analyzes the doctor-patient relationship in Chapter 24. Eeva Sointu (York St. John University, UK), who has extensively researched complementary and alternative forms of medicine, provides a chapter (Chapter 25) on that topic.

Part VI concludes with chapters on the health care systems of the US, the UK, and China – three important countries in health affairs. Chapter 26 is by Bernice Pescosolido (Indiana University) and Carol Boyer (Rutgers University), who contribute a chapter on the American health care delivery system. The chapter explores the current vortex of health care reforms, problems of access, and costs pertinent to the ongoing legal, legislative, and political disputes taking place in American society. Pescosolido is Distinguished and Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology at Indiana University and Founding Director of the Indiana Consortium for Mental Health Services Research (ICMHSR). She has served as Vice President of the American Sociological Association, received several awards in sociology and public health, and elected to the National Academy of Medicine. Boyer has had a distinguished career at Rutgers where she is former Associate Director of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, and a well-known medical sociologist.

Chapter 27 on the British health care system by Jonathan Gabe (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK) is next, and he brings us up-to-date on that country’s national health service and health issues. A noted scholar, he is a former editor of the journal Sociology of Health & Illness, past chair of the European Sociological Association’s Research Network on the Sociology of Health and Illness, past president of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Health Sociology, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK. The book concludes with Chapter 28 on the Chinese health care delivery system by Lei Jin and Chenyu Ye of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. This chapter was written in difficult circumstances as Hong Kong was undergoing political protests at the time, and the Chinese University’s campus was closed because of COVID-19. Nonetheless, they contribute an excellent chapter on China, including efforts to cope with the pandemic.

Finally, I would like to thank the efforts of several people at Wiley Blackwell in Oxford who had an important role in the development and publication of this book. These include Justin Vaughan, Charlie Hamlyn, Richard Samson, Merryl Le Roux, and Clelia Petracca. Katie McIntyre at Birmingham-Southern College worked on the index. The first volume of this book originated in a conversation with Justin in a bar in New York City one warm and pleasant afternoon during a long-ago American Sociological Association meeting. This version continues the venture. And thanks again to my wife, Cynthia, for her loving support.

William C. Cockerham

Williamsburg, Virginia