Testing Baby: The Transformation of Newborn Screening, Parenting, and Policymaking (Critical Issues in Health and Medicine) - Softcover

Grob, Rachel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813551366 ISBN 13: 9780813551364

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Within forty-eight hours after birth, the heel of every baby in the United States has been pricked and the blood sent for compulsory screening to detect or rule out a large number of disorders. Newborn screening is expanding rapidly, fueled by the prospect of saving lives. Yet many lives are also changed by it in ways not yet recognized.

Testing Baby is the first book to draw on parents’ experiences with newborn screening in order to examine its far-reaching sociological consequences. Rachel Grob’s cautionary tale also explores the powerful ways that parents’ narratives have shaped this emotionally charged policy arena. Newborn screening occurs almost always without parents’ consent and often without their knowledge or understanding, yet it has the power to alter such things as family dynamics at the household level, the context of parenting, the way we manage disease identity, and how parents’ interests are understood and solicited in policy debates.

About this title

About the Author

RACHEL GROB is Scholar in Residence and Director of National Initiatives at the Center for Patient Partnerships (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Health Advocacy faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the co-editor of Patients as Policy Actors (Rutgers University Press).

Edition details

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813551366
• ISBN 13: 9780813551364
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 290