More Than Medicine

A thoughtful and meticulously researched contribution to the body of knowledge about community-centered health care provision and activism for the past 50 years. Nelson's critical analysis and evaluation of historical source materials provides a rich explanation of the promise and potential of empowerment-based models of health care. By linking the civil rights, new left, and women's movements' strategies into a consistent and comprehensive narrative, she provides fresh insight into how important historical ideas of the 1950s and 1960s had new life breathed into them in the 21st century, proving that the past is indeed prologue. I strongly recommend this book for anyone seeking answers for how to build effective health care solutions for disadvantaged communities. -- Loretta Ross,co-founder, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective
Jennifer Nelson has written another terrific book! Her history of the antecedents, the evolution, and the political challenges of the women-of-color-led movement for reproductive and sexual healthand its present identity as the Reproductive Justice movement is absolutely indispensable and profoundly important. -- Rickie Solinger,author of Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know
Makes an important contribution to the growing body of work on the history of health activism. . . . With a deft eye for detail, Nelson grounds her analysis in local stories that take us from Mississippi to Seattle to Atlanta and offer rich stories about womens understanding of reproductive and sexual rights and the negotiationssometimes successful, sometimes unsuccessfulbetween white feminists and women of color. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the history of the womens health movement in a nuanced way, taking full account of the ways race and class shaped feminist organizing and affected womens experiences of reproduction and sexuality. -- Johanna Schoen,Rutgers University
Nelson has written a demanding but important book. She researched her topic well and provides a valuable history of womens health care movements of the 20thcentury. * Choice *
In the 1960s and & 70s, US feminists worked for a womens health movement that would reach beyond the sex discrimination dominating the mainstream medical system and towards healthcare that valued womens autonomy. The author examines the struggle for abortion rights, as well as the creation of community and women-centered clinics. * Conscience: The Newsjournal of Catholic Opinion *
The stories Nelson presents are familiar to womens history, the civil rights movement, and women of color feminism, but sewn together they tell a broader and connected story of the womens health movement across the United States and its longevity through the 1980s and 1990s. * Journal of American History *
More Than Medicinemakes important contributions to the history of medicine and womens history. It is a welcome addition to both fields of study. * Project Muse *
More Than Medicineis an extensively researched book, focusing on the struggle for feminists to make womens health a priority, to reach out to those in need of health care, and to integrate women friendly policies and provide care to those who have very little access to it. * Metapsychology *
Nelsons work inMore than Medicineis a solid primer on feminist health and the need for collaboration across social justice platform. * Feminist Collections *