Health and Societies

专业详情

The HSOC program:

• examines health and medicine in social context, equipping students with the critical faculties and multidisciplinary skills that will prepare them for careers in public health, health services, and a variety of other arenas.
• builds on the foundation of three core disciplines: anthropology, history, and sociology. Methods and courses from other disciplines and fields—including epidemiology, political science, business/economics, law, environmental studies, and bioethics—supplement the core disciplines and provide majors with the variety of skills necessary to grasp the forces that have shaped our contemporary health landscapes.
• produces graduates who are “multilingual” scholars and citizens, fluent in the methods and perspectives of several social science disciplines— theoretically informed but practically minded, with a global outlook and local experience.

HSOC majors are able to

• Read scientific and medical texts critically, and assess their social, cultural, and political origins and ramifications;
• Identify and define key social determinants of health in a variety of historical and contemporary contexts;
• Analyze the interplay of factors that have resulted in particular health outcomes and policies;
• Integrate methods from history, sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines in empirical assessments of communities, populations, and policy interventions on multiple levels;
• Pursue in-depth research projects using published sources, archival material, and ethnographic and experimental data;
• Analyze data using both quantitative and qualitative methods; and
• Participate in the design of effective multipronged strategies to address health challenges in local, national, and international contexts.