Rachel Best is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan. She studies politics, culture, and inequality in the context of health, illness, and medicine. Her first book, Common Enemies: Disease Campaigns in America, argues that Americans’ propensity to campaign against one disease at a time has unintended consequences for health policy. Her next book will explore the political and social consequences of overestimating how much we can control our health. Another current research project uses computational methods to explore the relationship between disease stigma, advocacy, and policy outcomes. A third line of research analyzes the effects of stigma, visibility, and other characteristics of disabilities on outcomes in ADA litigation.
