ANTH 1785 - ANTHROPOLOGY OF HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS
Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Healthcare delivery and access to healthcare face a number of competing challenges. Local and global economies of health, diminishing expenditure on public health, pharmaceutical interventions, patient demands, and patient advocacy are forcing us to look more critically at how healthcare is delivered and experienced to devise changes for the future. Simultaneously, these are issues related to the governance of health systems and health markets. Changes made to health systems are often based on economic and political rationale. In this undergraduate course, students will explore a range of key concepts and themes in anthropology of healthcare systems. As such, the course will also serve as an introduction to Medical Anthropology, particularly as a sub-field of Sociocultural Anthropology that has established collaborations with Biomedicine, Public Health, and Biological Sciences. The objective is to understand how the social and the biological are intricately intertwined, both in the therapeutic domains of healthcare providers and the experiential worlds of ordinary people. A central analytic in the course is to examine ways in which healthcare systems are imbricated with identity-based health inequality. Additionally, students will develop critical appraisal skills to assess the quality of evidence used to support developments in healthcare policy and practice. They will also learn to look critically at the role that governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as community perspectives play in shaping healthcare. The healthcare systems examined will include USA and South Asia to allow students to relate their learning on this course to their own educational and health profession settings.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Seminar
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Click here for class schedule information.
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