Contacts | Program of Study | Application to the Health and Society Minor | Thesis Prize | Summary of Minor Requirements | Approved Courses | Advising and Grading

Department Website: https://voices.uchicago.edu/healthandsocietyminor

Program of Study

The Health and Society minor explores the social, political, and economic processes that shape individual and population health. Disability, experiences of illness, categories of disorder, ideals of well-being, and models of medical intervention can all vary between cultural settings and across history. Rapid changes in medicine and biotechnology create new understandings and expectations about illness, health, and well-being. At the same time, inequalities in access to care and in health outcomes across populations, in the United States and globally, have become important to conversations in policy and practice alike. At the individual level, how and where one lives may influence a range of conditions and outcomes including mental health, the onset of diabetes, and the length of life. Health is also influenced—in both positive and negative ways—by our relationships and social networks. Finally, people's life chances and health trajectories form within frameworks of health care policy and systems of provision and exposure to environments that reflect historical legacies, economic activity, and political choices. To understand health in its broader contexts, this minor encompasses a range of disciplines and methods in the social sciences, and differential emphases on theory, practice, and policy implications.

A minor in Health and Society will provide a background for medical school, the allied health professions, public health, health policy, health advocacy, the study of law with an emphasis on health, and doctoral work in a range of social science disciplines.

Application to the Health and Society Minor

College students in any field of study may complete a minor in Health and Society. The flexibility of this minor complements majors in any of the disciplines. Students who elect the minor program in Health and Society must contact the program manager and fill out a minor map before the end of Spring Quarter of their third year to declare their intention to complete the minor. The program manager must submit approval on the Consent to Complete a Minor Program form provided by the College to the student's College adviser by the Spring Quarter of the student's third year.

Thesis Prize

The Health and Society program, with support from the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence, awards an annual prize to the best undergraduate theses or capstone projects written about a topic that explores health and/or medicine from a social sciences perspective, broadly conceived. Prizes are awarded to the two BA theses that exemplify the highest quality of originality, disciplinary rigor, and relevance to health and society. Students enrolled in any program of study in the College are encouraged to apply. Submission details are available on the Health and Society website.

Summary of Minor Requirements

The Health and Society minor requires a total of five courses, including HLTH 17000 Introduction to Health and Society, which provides exposure to a range of approaches and perspectives in the social sciences, and four approved courses designated as counting toward the Health and Society minor. Please see the Approved Courses list below.

HLTH 17000	Introduction to Health and Society	100
or HLTH 17001	Introduction to Health and Society II
Four electives chosen from the list of Approved Courses *		400
Total Units		500

*

Students may only include one of the following methods courses toward the minor: ANTH 21420 Ethnographic Methods, CHDV 20100 Human Development Research Design, CHDV 20101 Applied Statistics in Human Development Research, ECON 21010 Statistical Methods in Economics, PLSC 22913 Political Science Research Methods, SOCI 20001 Sociological Methods, SOCI 20004 Statistical Methods of Research, SOSC 20112 Introductory Statistical Methods and Applications for the Social Sciences, SOSC 20223 Ethnographic Research Methods, or SOSC 20224 Studying Online Cultures: An Introduction to Digital Ethnographic Methods.

Approved Courses

These courses may be used to satisfy the minor course requirements. Additional approved courses will be updated as they are added each quarter. Not all courses will be offered each year. Please check the Health and Society Minor website for complete listings and for information about current course offerings.

Up to one of the following:
ANTH 21420	Ethnographic Methods	100
CHDV 20100	Human Development Research Design	100
CHDV 20101	Applied Statistics in Human Development Research	100
ECON 21010	Statistical Methods in Economics	100
PLSC 22913	Political Science Research Methods	100
SOCI 20001	Sociological Methods	100
SOCI 20004	Statistical Methods of Research	100
SOSC 20112	Introductory Statistical Methods and Applications for the Social Sciences	100
SOSC 20223	Ethnographic Research Methods	100
SOSC 20224	Studying Online Cultures: An Introduction to Digital Ethnographic Methods	100
Any of the following:
BPRO 22700	Abortion: Morality, Politics, Philosophy	100
BPRO 22800	Drinking Alcohol: Social Problem or Normal Cultural Practice?	100
BPRO 23100	Food: From Need to Want, or, Ethics and Aesthetics	100
BPRO 28300	Disability and Design	100
CCTS 20400	Health Disparities in Breast Cancer	100
CEGU 22100	Disease, Health, and the Environment in Global Context	100
CHDV 20000	Introduction to Human Development	100
CHDV 21500	Darwinian Health	100
CHDV 23301	Culture, Mental Health, and Psychiatry	100
CHDV 23305	Critical Studies of Mental Health in Higher Education	100
CHDV 24299	Troubling Adolescence	100
CHDV 24599	Historical and Contemporary Issues in U.S. Racial Health Inequality	100
CHDV 25199	Sensing Bodies, Sensing the World: Anthropology of Embodiment and Perception	100
CHDV 25777	Aging and the Life Course: An Intersectional Perspective	100
CHDV 27099	Anthropology Of Trauma: Historical, Theoretical and Cross-Cultural Approaches	100
CHDV 27250	Psychological Anthropology	100
CHSS 32000	Introduction to Science Studies	100
CMLT 25662	Archiving AIDS: Art, Literature, Theory	100
ECON 24450	Inequality and the Social Safety Net: Theory, Empirics, and Policies	100
ENGL 10116	Medicine in British Popular Culture	100
ENGL 10620	Literature, Medicine, and Embodiment	100
ENGL 15520	Illness and Life Writing	100
ENST 20151	Pacific Worlds: Race, Gender, Health, and the Environment	100
ENST 20170	Pandemics, Urban Space, and Public Life	100
ENST 21700	Applied Research in Environment, Development and Health (Approval contingent on the focus of the research project)	100
ENST 25460	Environmental Effects on Human Health	100
GNSE 12103	Treating Trans-: Practices of Medicine, Practices of Theory	100
GNSE 12123	Global Perspectives on Reproductive Justice Theory and Practice	100
GNSE 23136	On being Ill: Feminist and Queer Cancer Narratives	100
HIPS 29635	Tutorial: Power and Medicine	100
HIPS 29641	Tutorial: Medical Ethics in the Hospital and Clinic	100
HIPS 29643	Tutorial: Toxic America: Pollutants, Poisons, Politics	100
HIST 20111	History of Death	100
HIST 27720	Disability in American History	100
HIST 29607	History Colloquium: Epidemics, Public Health, and Cities	100
HIST 29678	History Colloquium: Medicine and Society	100
HLTH 24003	Death & Dying	100
HMRT 21400	Health and Human Rights	100
HMRT 23000	Encountering AIDS: Queer Representations, Loss, and Memory	100
HUMA 25207	Mindfulness: Experience and Media	100
IRHU 27006	Research in Archives: Human Bodies in History	100
IRHU 27009	Normal People	100
KNOW 32206	Ontologies of Illness	100
KNOW 36069	Scientific Childhood	100
KNOW 36077	The Crisis of Expertise	100
KNOW 36078	Normal People	100
KNOW 36080	Technologies of the Body	100
KNOW 36230	Death Panels: Exploring dying and death through comics	100
KNOW 37017	[Re]Framing Graphic Medicine	100
PBHS 23700	Sexual Health: Identity, Behavior, and Outcomes	100
PBHS 24700	Community Health Promotion	100
PBHS 30910	Epidemiology and Population Health	100
PBHS 31450	Social Inequalities in Health: Race/Ethnicity & Class	100
PBHS 31900	Global Health Metrics	100
PBHS 35100	Health Services Research Methods	100
PBHS 35600	Money, Medicine, and Markets: The Financialization of the US Health System	100
PBHS 38010	Economic Analysis of Health Policies	100
PBPL 25500	Introduction to U.S. Health Policy and Politics	100
PBPL 28335	Health Care Markets and Regulation	100
PBPL 28925	Health Impacts of Transportation Policies	100
PHIL 21609	Topics in Medical Ethics	100
PPHA 38300	Health Economics and Public Policy	100
PSYC 21750	Biological Clocks and Behavior	100
PSYC 22350	Social Neuroscience	100
RLST 20223	Magic, Miracles, and Medicine: Healthcare in the Bible and the Ancient World	100
RLST 24000	Is It Ethical to Have Children in the Climate Crisis?	100
RLST 24103	Bioethics	100
RLST 26301	Religion and AIDS	100
RLST 26302	Religion, Medicine, and the Experience of Illness	100
RLST 26313	Judaism, Medicine, and the Body	100
RLST 26316	Medical Innnovation and Religious Reform in Early Modernity	100
RLST 26322	Healing Traditions	100
RLST 27501	Indigenous Religions, Health, and Healing	100
RLST 28900	Magic, Science, and Religion	100
SOSC 18100	Topics in Behavioral and Social Sciences Relevant to Medicine	100
SOCI 20580	Health and Society	100
SPAN 22623	Writing Contagion	100
SPAN 28700	Monsters and Misfits: Disability in Early Modern Spanish Literature	100
SSAD 24950	International Disability Rights and Justice	100
SSAD 41412	Global Mental Health	100
SSAD 46622	Key Issues in Healthcare: An Interdisciplinary Case Studies Approach	100
SSAD 49032	Health and Aging Policy	100

Advising and Grading

Students who elect the minor program in Health and Society must meet with the program director before the end of Spring Quarter of their third year to declare their intention to complete the minor. The director's approval for the minor program should be submitted to a student's College adviser by the Spring Quarter of a student’s third year.

Courses in the minor may not be double counted with the student's major(s), other minors, or general education requirements. Courses in the minor must be taken for quality grades, and more than half of the requirements for the minor must be met by registering for courses bearing University of Chicago course numbers.

Students may petition to count one course not featured in the Approved Courses list toward the minor. Petitions will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. A petitioned course must connect to issues of health broadly conceived in order to be considered: it should explore the processes that shape individual and population health in their social, material, and physical contexts. 

Listhost

https://uchicago.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=a354d8fa2192f2bff857988c3&id=6ad186e3a9