Proseminar in Social Medicine

MMH 701 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Social Medicine is a transdisciplinary field of study and practice that uses insights from the interpretive social sciences and humanities to improve medical theory and the delivery of health care. This course will explore the historical foundations of social medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and North America. It will then examine case studies of social medicine in the contemporary world that confront the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that shape the distribution of disease, access to care, delivery paradigms, and care outcomes for individuals and communities. All along, it will interrogate how social medicine analyses can be used to inform critical media interventions that seek to address social suffering and to promote health equity. At the end of the semester, students will have mastered the foundations of social medicine and developed the ability to apply its insights to independent scholarly and creative work.

This seminar is designed for graduate students in the Master of Science, Media, Medicine and Health program at HMS.