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Reviewed by:
  • Social Epidemiology: Strategies for Public Health Activism
  • Susan Sered (bio)
Julie G. Cwikel Social Epidemiology: Strategies for Public Health Activism Columbia University Press, 2006. 613 pp.

Julie Cwikel, a veteran scholar and health activist, is best known in Israel as the founder and director of the Center for Women's Health Studies and Promotion at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. The Center, unique not only in Israel but in the world, combines basic clinical sciences, medicine and social sciences with community activism in order to promote women's health status.

In Social Epidemiology, Cwikel's newest book, she applies this same approach to a wide range of health issues that can be understood and addressed through the discipline of social epidemiology. For Cwikel, epidemiology is never simply a theoretical pursuit. Rather, "This book starts with questions; foremost among them is, 'How can we use what we know about health and social conditions to improve the well being of our society?'" (p. xi). As a textbook aimed at undergraduates and graduate students as well as public health and social work professionals, Social Epidemiology moves systematically through the historical roots of the discipline, its core concepts and language, it methods, and its applications.

While gender is not the overt theme of the book, Cwikel's longstanding interest in women's health informs much of its theoretical analysis of gender and racial disparities, as well as the specific examples and case studies highlighted in the book. Substantial sections on "Women and the Epidemic of Violence," "Prevention and Treatment of HIV," and "Controversies in Screening Health Policy: National Mammography Guidelines" encourage the reader to think about relationships among cultural expectations, public policy, psychosocial factors and health outcomes.

One case study in the book features an example of particular relevance to Israeli readers—"Social Epidemiological Study of Trafficked Women [End Page 242] from the Former Soviet Union into Israel." This section comprises two parts. First, Cwikel overviews the plight of trafficked women in Israel: The average number of clients per day is twelve, most women work seven days a week, half report being threatened or attacked at work, and few have access to health care for their own needs. Second, Cwikel reports how the findings of the epidemiological study were presented to the Knesset and government committees on foreign workers in order to encourage policy and program changes that will provide better access to health services and reduce trafficking. This sort of two-pronged approach characterizes the case studies throughout the book and clarifies the contribution that good research can and should make to the shaping of good public policies.

While the book does not focus on Israel in particular, Cwikel's extensive citations of studies by Israeli scholars—including a large number of Israeli women scholars—has the potential to bring some of the excellent Israeli scholarship in the fields of public health, epidemiology, medical sociology and anthropology, social psychology and social work to the attention of a larger international audience. Though this may not have been a conscious aim of the book, it certainly is a welcome contribution.

Susan Sered

Susan Sered, Ph.D., is Associate Director of the Master of Arts in Women's Health at Suffolk University in Boston. Before coming to Suffolk, Sered directed the 'Religion, Health and Healing Initiative' at Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions, and served as Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bar Ilan University in Israel. Sered's publications include Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity (University of California Press), Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women (Oxford University Press), and What Makes Women Sick? Maternity, Modesty and Militarism in Israeli Society (UPNE).

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