We follow celebrities on Twitter and Facebook, watch them on television and read about them in supermarket checkout lines. With increasingly blurred lines between private and public life, our relationship with celebrities has never been so immediate, and their personal trials are news headlines and water cooler talk.

Offering the first extensive look at celebrity health sagas, this book examines the ways in which their stories become our stories, influencing public perception and framing dialog about wellness, disease and death. These private-yet-public narratives drive fund-raising, reduce stigma and influence policy. Celebrities like Mary Tyler Moore, Robin Roberts, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve - as well as 200 others included in the study - have left a lasting legacy of supporting health-related causes by turning their personal health struggles into public health narratives.