Keeping the focus on public health: the struggles of a tobacco prevention task force.

This case study examines a nonlegislative task force as it struggled to reach internal consensus despite external political constraints. The study highlights the convergence of politics and science, revealing complex issues likely to be confronted by advocates and public health officials. Three themes capture participants' experiences: context, sizing up the opportunities and constraints; task force process, tacit strategy to operate outside the political context and play the science card; and aftermath, a glass half full. The task force took advantage of ambiguous parameters, crafting a comprehensive statewide plan to reduce tobacco use and breaking out of the common public health paradigm of allowing budget considerations to drive program design. These internal victories could not sustain a policy success in the legislature. However, the group's product sets science-based standards for future program development, and the task force's process provides valuable insights into other states developing tobacco prevention and control policies.

An essay on an authentic meaning of medicalization: the patient's perspective.

In this essay, the experiences of the author serve as a key to a critical understanding of medicalization in the treatment of cancer in American society. Forms of medicalization described are (a) giving useless treatments to keep the patient under medical care; (b) demeaning and undermining efforts at self-determination and self-care; and (c) keeping the patient's life suspended by continual reminders that death is just around the corner, and that all time and energy left must be devoted to ferreting out and killing the disease.