William C. Cockerham is Professor of Sociology, Medicine, and Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is also Chair of the Department of Sociology and Co-Director of the Center for Social Medicine. Additionally, he is a member of the Scientific Committee on Global Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was recently elected to the Steering Board of the Research Committee on the Sociology of Health of the International Sociological Association.

Professor Cockerham has published numerous articles, chapters, and books in the United States and abroad. His textbook on medical sociology was recently published in Chinese by the Huaxia Publishing House in Beijing, while other work has been translated into German, Norwegian, and Japanese. Forthcoming publications include the 8th edition of Medical Sociology (Prentice-Hall, 2001), the 2nd edition of Readings in Medical Sociology (Prentice-Hall, 2001), the Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology (Blackwell, 2001), and the chapter on medical sociology in Sociology at the Cross-Roads: International Perspectives at the Dawn of the Millennium (Sage, 2000). He is also guest co-editor of a special issue of Social Science & Medicine on the health crisis in Russia and Eastern Europe. The focus of his research is on health lifestyles.