19.3 Health in the United States

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

• Apply social epidemiology to health in the United States
• Explain disparities of health based on gender, socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity
• Summarize mental health and disability issues in the United States
• Explain the terms stigma and medicalization

Health in the United States is a complex and often contradictory issue. On the one hand, as one of the wealthiest nations, the United States fares well in health comparisons with the rest of the world. However, the United States also lags behind almost every industrialized country in terms of providing care to all its citizens. The following sections look at different aspects of health in the United States.