High Risk and High Stakes : Health Professionals, Politics, and Policy

Wysong analyzes the nature and extent of the involvement of seven major health and safety professional organizations in the development of the most significant national reform effort in occupational health policy since the OSH Act of 1970: The High Risk Occupational Disease Notification and Prevention Act. The professions have long been a focus of study in sociology; however, this is the first book to examine how the interests and involvement of health professional's organizations on a national health policy issue are linked to external interests and dynamic contextual factors. By illuminating how professional societies' policy choices are embedded within and shaped by economic and political contexts, Wysong refines prevailing new class interpretations of professionals' interests where policy reforms are concerned. This book will be of particular concern to scholars and researchers involved with medical sociology, the sociology of work, complex organizations, social change, and occupational health policy.