UH Hilo sociologist, scholar-activist Lindy Hern investigates social movements and healthcare policy
Associate Professor Lindy Hern has been researching the movement for healthcare reform in the United States since 2004, with a specific focus on the Movement for Single Payer Healthcare.
By Susan Enright/UH Hilo Stories.
This story on Lindy Hern and her research activity was first published on the website Keaohou that features UH Hilo faculty research and scholarly activity.
The deep-dive research of sociologist Lindy Hern into social movements and healthcare policy has brought to light a complex process in the grassroots movement for universal healthcare.
“I have been studying the movement for healthcare reform in the United States since 2004, with a specific focus on the Movement for Single Payer Healthcare, also called the expanded and improved Medicare for All movement,” says Associate Professor Hern who currently serves as chair of the sociology department, University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo.
Hern has also conducted applied research on a range of topics including transfer student retention at UH Hilo and community responses to natural disasters in Hawaiʻi. Previously, she investigated gender stereotypes that sparked the Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby movement.
Hern received her bachelor of arts in sociology (2003) from Central Methodist University, and both her master of arts (2005) and doctor of philosophy (2012) in sociology from University of Missouri-Columbia. She has been investigating single payer health care reform from the jump; her dissertation is titled, “Everybody In and Nobody Out: Opportunity, Narrative, and the Radical Flank in the Movement for Single Payer Health Care Reform.”
Groundbreaking investigation into the grassroots movement for universal healthcare
Hern says her analysis of the grassroots movement for universal healthcare is something that was almost entirely missing from the literature when she started her investigation.
“Most studies at that point took a top down approach to this issue, focusing on elite political actors, politicians,” she says. “Very little was known about what was happening on the ground with public involvement, grassroots. Just the descriptive material adds a lot to the existing literature, which includes about three decades of the history of this movement.”
Through this research, Hern developed a new theoretical model — The Environment of Opportunity Model — which builds upon the existing theory at the time she started the work, but most of which grew out of her grounded data.
The model, spelled out in her book, Single Payer Healthcare Reform: Grassroots Mobilization and the Turn Against Establishment Politics in the Medicare for All Movement (2020, Palgrave Macmillan), focuses on analyzing how activists come to a shared understanding of the opportunities that exist in their environment or context, and how this shared understanding results in specific forms of grassroots activism.
“I argue that it is through a complex process of narrative practice that activists develop these shared understandings, which then evolved into action in an ongoing cycle,” Hern explains.
In her book, scholar-activist Hern approaches her main topic of health care reform in three ways. She provides a comprehensive history of the grassroots movement for health care reform in the United States from within the single-payer movement. She discusses the role that narrative or “constructions of opportunity” plays in grassroots mobilization, which builds on existing social movement theory. And she examines the turn against “politics as usual” and establishment politicians that began in progressive social movements long before the last two presidential election cycles.
“My analysis of the single-payer Medicare for All movement can tell us about the rise in anti-establishment politics in the United States, which resulted in our current political realities,” she says.
- Paper: Resisting “Politics as Usual”: Examining the Rise of Anti-Establishment Politics by Comparing the Narratives of Opportunity Used Within the Single Payer Movement During Two Presidential Eras (Aug. 30, 2019, Journal of Historical Sociology)
See also two stories on Hern’s work:
- New book by sociologist examines single-payer healthcare reform (July 21, 2020, UH Hilo Stories)
- Podcast: UH Hilo sociology professor Lindy Hern answers the question, “What is universal healthcare and why is the U.S. the only major country without it?” (Nov. 1, 2021, UH Hilo Stories)
Enlisting students as published co-authors and conference presenters
Hern’s students provided research support on smaller aspects of the larger project on the single-payer movement. For example, a student researcher helped analyze news media discussing this topic and was listed as a co-author on conference presentations on this specific topic.
Students have also worked with Hern on a couple of other projects.
“In one project, we did focus group interviews with transfer students,” says Hern. “The student researcher was able to present at national conferences with me and we published an article from this research.”
- Paper: “We Need Community”: Assessing the Impact of Faculty, Advising, Campus Social Life, and Racial Formation on the Transfer Student Experience at a Diverse Island Campus (Sept. 2019, Journal of Applied Social Science)
“I look forward to finding more ways to involve students in the future,” she says.
Current scholarly activity: health policy, scholar activism
Hern is currently working on a second book as well as articles that examine the single-payer movement in the context of the COVID era and the Trump Eras.
“I’m also still working on developing some articles about Hawaiʻi specific health policy,” she says.
In addition, since publishing an article about scholar-activism — Navigating the Borderland of Scholar Activism: Narrative Practice as Applied Sociology in the Movement for Single Payer Health Care Reform (Jan. 2016, Journal of Applied Social Science) — Hern is becoming known as an expert who talks and writes about the topic.
- Story: UH Hilo sociologist Lindy Hern gives lecture series in Missouri, focuses on health care reform (March 6, 2024, UH Hilo Stories)
Scholar activist Hern is currently guest editing an issue on scholar activism for the Journal for Applied Social Science.
“Almost 200 papers were submitted for a 12-paper issue, so it’s a topic that is garnering a lot of interest right now in the United States and around the world,” she says.
Related story
Story by Susan Enright, public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.
