Sociology of Health and Medicine

3 units

This course provides an overview of sociological approaches to the study of medicine. The course will unpack how our social world impacts health and illness and how health and illness are understood in our social world. Key topics include social determinants of health, health policy and structure within the U.S., medicine as a profession, and the social construction of illness. The course will also work to understand how social systems of categorization, from race to sex to sexuality, have been constructed via our understandings of health and the project of medicine. All course content will be taught with an emphasis on the intersections of medicine and social inequalities