Health, Medicine, and Society

Catalog description

This course is an introduction to social dimensions of health, illness, and healing. The course centers on the ways in which personal experiences with health and illness are informed by social structures (culture, medicine, inequalities, religion, policy/laws, etc.) and contexts (neighborhoods, nations, geography, etc.), and how individuals, in turn, influence such structures through individual attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Thus, this course examines how health, illnesses, and recovery are socially and medically constructed and developed, as well as individually experienced and perceived. This course also emphasizes the role that social statuses and identities like race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability have in shaping our health and healthcare experiences.