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ANTHRO 231

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL MEDICINE

3 credits.

Provides analytical tools for the critical examination of the social, cultural, political and economic determinants of health conditions and medical practice. Pays special attention to how these factors determine how patients and providers experience and ideate disease and treatment, and how they respond to specific health care policies. Emphasizes the important role that conditions of structural violence and inequality play as determinants of health conditions in a globalized world.

Prerequisites & course information

Requisites: None Course Designation: Core GenEd - Humanities & Arts Breadth - Humanities or Social Science Level - Elementary L&S Credit - L&S Liberal Arts and Science Repeatable for Credit: No Last Taught: Fall 2026 Learning Outcomes: 1. Identify and analyze within their social, cultural and economic contexts key historical issues, and their significance, in the history of healing practices and public health. Audience: Undergraduate 2. Develop an understanding of the mutually shaping interactions between perceptions of health, illness and medical practices and culture and society. Audience: Undergraduate 3. Analyze the role of social factors, race, gender, ethnicity, class, among others, in shaping cultural realities related to body normativity, health, medical practice, public health and medical education. Audience: Undergraduate 4. Identify the role that patients, healthcare providers, institutions and the state play in modeling medical practice, ideas about the body, public health policies, and medical education. Audience: Undergraduate 5. Discern the impact of programs of global health as they intersect with international politics in the shaping of ideas about human rights, race, medical hierarchies and public health policies. Audience: Undergraduate Learning Outcomes: 1. Identify and analyze within their social, cultural and economic contexts key historical issues, and their significance, in the history of healing practices and public health. Audience: Undergraduate 2. Develop an understanding of the mutually shaping interactions between perceptions of health, illness and medical practices and culture and society. Audience: Undergraduate 3. Analyze the role of social factors, race, gender, ethnicity, class, among others, in shaping cultural realities related to body normativity, health, medical practice, public health and medical education. Audience: Undergraduate 4. Identify the role that patients, healthcare providers, institutions and the state play in modeling medical practice, ideas about the body, public health policies, and medical education. Audience: Undergraduate 5. Discern the impact of programs of global health as they intersect with international politics in the shaping of ideas about human rights, race, medical hierarchies and public health policies. Audience: Undergraduate

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