Section 1: Case studies in health policy: an introduction ~ Mark Exworthy and Martin Powell; Case studies of the health policy process: a methodological introduction ~ Mike Marinetto; Section 2: Creation, consolidation, disillusion (1948-1980s): NHS birthing pains ~ Martin Powell; Hospital policy in England and Wales: of what is the 1962 Hospital Plan a case? ~ John Mohan; The case study as history: 'Ideology, class and the National Health Service' by Rudolf Klein ~ Ian Greener; Hospitals in Trouble ~ Joan Higgins; Normal Accidents: learning how to learn about safety ~ Justin Keen; Repressed interests: explaining why patients and the public have little influence on health care policy: Alford's concepts of dominant, challenging and repressed interests ~ Stephen Peckham and Micky Willmott; Section 3: Safe in our hands - conflicts and challenges (1980 and 1990s): The 1983 Griffiths Inquiry ~ Fraser Macfarlane, Mark Exworthy and Micky Willmott; 'AIDS in the UK: The making of policy, 1981 - 1994' (Berridge, 1996): a case study in British health policy ~ David Evans; What the doctor ordered: the Audit Commission's case study of general practice fundholders ~ David Wainwright and Michael Calnan; 'Coping with uncertainty: Policy and politics in the National Health Service' (Hunter, 1980) ~ David Hughes; 'Shaping strategic change': changing the way organisational change was researched in the NHS ~ Louise Locock and Sue Dopson; Section 4: New Labour, new NHS? The NHS since the 1990s: Patient choice: a contemporary policy story ~ Stephen Peckham and Marie Sanderson; The individualisation of health: health surveillance, lifestyle control and public health ~ Alison Hann; NHS confidential: Implementation, or ... How great expectations in Whitehall are dashed in Stoke-on-Trent ~ Calum Paton; Implementing clinical guidelines: a case study of research in context ~ George Dowswell and Stephen Harrison; Carolyn Hughes Tuohy's analysis of the English National Health Service internal market of the 1990s ~ Pauline Allen; Evidence and health inequalities: the Black, Acheson and Marmot reports ~ Mark Exworthy and Adam Oliver; Section 5: Policy learning from case studies in health policy: taking forward the debate ~ Mark Exworthy and Stephen Peckham; Case studies in health policy: concluding remarks ~ Mark Exworthy and Martin Powell.