Howard Waitzkin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Health Sciences Center at the University of New Mexico[1] and adjunct professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Illinois.[2]
Waitzkin grew up in a small town in northeastern Ohio. At an early age, tragedy in his low-income family spurred his interest in the relationships among oppression and inequality, public health, and medicine.[3] Waitzkin received his MD and PhD in sociology from Harvard University in 1972.[4] Over the course of his career, Waitzkin has practiced as a primary care physician in internal medicine and has taught social medicine at a variety of clinics and universities, including the United Farm Workers Clinic in Salinas, California; La Clínica de la Raza in Oakland, California; Stanford University Medical Center; Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston; and the University of California. Waitzkin joined the faculty of the University of New Mexico in 1997. Currently, he practices medicine part-time in rural areas and is adjunct professor of internal medicine at the University of Illinois.
As an activist, he has worked for single payer national health programs in the United States and Latin America; local community and worker control for accessible health services; civilian health and mental health services for active duty military personnel in the struggle for peace; and policies to improve the social, political, and economic determinants of illness and early death. He currently serves as director of the Civilian Medical Resources Network, which provides civilian health and mental health services for GIs who have not been able to meet their needs in the military,[5] and president of the Allende Program in Social Medicine, a small foundation that supports work in social medicine worldwide.[6]
Waitzkin has authored eight books, including "Social Medicine and the Coming Transformation (Routledge, 2021) and Medicine and Public Health at the End of Empire (Paradigm Publishers, 2011), and more than two hundred articles and chapters. His research has examined the patient-physician relationship, Latin American social medicine, neoliberal healthcare models in Latin America and the United States, and health and imperialism.[7] Waitzkin's work is inspired partly by Marxist theory and practice.