Now in its fifth edition, Exploring Medical Anthropology provides a concise and engaging introduction to medical anthropology. It presents competing theoretical perspectives in a balanced fashion, highlighting points of conflict and convergence. Concrete examples and the authors' personal research experiences are utilized to explain some of the discipline’s most important insights, such as that biology and culture matter equally in the human experience of disease and that medical anthropology can help to alleviate human suffering.

The text has been thoroughly updated for the fifth edition, including new material on intersectionality, disability, diet, reproductive health, mental health, and public health (including Covid19); additional material on theory and methods, including rapid ethnographic assessment; additional examples from outside the Americas; and the inclusion of research from BIPOC scholars.

It contains a range of pedagogical features to support teaching and learning, including images, text boxes, a glossary, and suggested further reading.