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 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 offers an annual prize for the best undergraduate thesis written about a topic that explores health and/or medicine from a social sciences perspective, broadly conceived. The prize will be awarded to a BA thesis that exemplifies the highest qualities 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 17000Introduction to Health and Society100
or HLTH 17001 Introduction to Health and Society II
Four electives chosen from the list of Approved Courses *400
Total Units500

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 21420Ethnographic Methods100
CHDV 20100Human Development Research Design100
CHDV 20101Applied Statistics in Human Development Research100
ECON 21010Statistical Methods in Economics100
PLSC 22913Political Science Research Methods100
SOCI 20001Sociological Methods100
SOCI 20004Statistical Methods of Research100
SOSC 20112Introductory Statistical Methods and Applications for the Social Sciences100
SOSC 20223Ethnographic Research Methods100
SOSC 20224Virtual Ethnographic Field Research Methods100
Any of the following:
ANTH 21345Living with Toxins: Anthropology of Environmental Health100
ANTH 24341Topics in Medical Anthropology100
BPRO 22800Drinking Alcohol: Social Problem or Normal Cultural Practice?100
BPRO 23100Food: From Need to Want, or, Ethics and Aesthetics100
BPRO 28300Disability and Design100
BPRO 28900Inequality: Origins, Dimensions, and Policy100
CCTS 20400Health Disparities in Breast Cancer100
CCTS 21011Clinical Research Design and Interpretation of Health Data100
CCTS 21017Good Vibes Only: Spiritual Energy Healing and Alternative Medicine in America100
CHDV 20000Introduction to Human Development100
CHDV 21500Darwinian Health100
CHDV 23204Medical Anthropology100
CHDV 23301Culture, Mental Health, and Psychiatry100
CHDV 23305Critical Studies of Mental Health in Higher Education100
CHDV 24599Historical and Contemporary Issues in U.S. Racial Health Inequality100
CHDV 25250Disability in Local and Global Contexts100
CHDV 27250Psychological Anthropology100
CHDV 27860History of Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences100
CHSS 32000Introduction to Science Studies100
CMLT 25662Archiving AIDS: Art, Literature, Theory100
ECON 24450Inequality and the Social Safety Net: Theory, Empirics, and Policies100
ECON 27720Economics and Regulation of Health Care Markets: Theory and Empirics100
ENGL 10620Literature, Medicine, and Embodiment100
ENGL 15520Illness and Life Writing100
ENST 20151Pacific Worlds: Race, Gender, Health, and the Environment100
ENST 20170Pandemics, Urban Space, and Public Life100
ENST 21700Applied Research in Environment, Development and Health (Approval contingent on the focus of the research project)100
ENST 25460Environmental Effects on Human Health100
GNSE 12103Treating Trans-: Practices of Medicine, Practices of Theory100
GNSE 23136On being Ill: Feminist and Queer Cancer Narratives100
HIPS 29635Tutorial: Power and Medicine100
HIPS 29641Tutorial: Medical Ethics in the Hospital and Clinic100
HIPS 29643Tutorial: Toxic America: Pollutants, Poisons, Politics100
HIST 20111History of Death100
HIST 25308Lab, Field, and Clinic: History and Anthropology of Medicine and the Life Sciences100
HIST 29607History Colloquium: Epidemics, Public Health, and Cities100
HIST 29678History Colloquium: Medicine and Society100
HLTH 24001Sexual and Reproductive Health and Gender100
HLTH 24002Mind, Brain, and Mental Health100
HLTH 24003Death & Dying100
HMRT 21400Health and Human Rights100
HMRT 23000Encountering AIDS: Queer Representations, Loss, and Memory100
HMRT 24506Disability in East Asia: Past and Present100
HUMA 25207Mindfulness: Experience and Media100
IRHU 27006Research in Archives: Human Bodies in History100
IRHU 27009Normal People100
KNOW 27015Graphic Medicine: Comic Creation as Knowledge Formation100
KNOW 32206Ontologies of Illness100
KNOW 36069Scientific Childhood100
KNOW 36080Technologies of the Body100
KNOW 37017[Re]Framing Graphic Medicine100
PBHS 23700Sexual Health: Identity, Behavior, and Outcomes100
PBHS 30910Epidemiology and Population Health100
PBHS 31450Social Inequalities in Health: Race/Ethnicity & Class100
PBHS 31900Global Health Metrics100
PBHS 35100Health Services Research Methods100
PBHS 38010Economic Analysis of Health Policies100
PBPL 25500Introduction to U.S. Health Policy and Politics100
PBPL 28335Health Care Markets and Regulation100
PBPL 28925Health Impacts of Transportation Policies100
PHIL 21609Topics in Medical Ethics100
PPHA 38300Health Economics and Public Policy100
PSYC 21750Biological Clocks and Behavior100
PSYC 22350Social Neuroscience100
RLST 24103Bioethics100
RLST 26301Religion and AIDS100
RLST 26302Religion, Medicine, and the Experience of Illness100
RLST 26316Medical Innnovation and Religious Reform in Early Modernity100
RLST 26322Healing Traditions100
RLST 27501Indigenous Religions, Health, and Healing100
RLST 28900Magic, Science, and Religion100
SOCI 20107Sociology of Human Sexuality100
SOCI 20537Gender, Health, and Medicine100
SOCI 28080Sociology of Medicine100
SOSC 18100Topics in Behavioral and Social Sciences Relevant to Medicine100
SPAN 22623Writing Contagion100
SPAN 28700Monsters and Misfits: Disability in Early Modern Spanish Literature100
SSAD 41412Global Mental Health100
SSAD 46622Key Issues in Healthcare: An Interdisciplinary Case Studies Approach100
SSAD 49032Health and Aging Policy100

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. 


Contacts

Chair

Associate Professor, Comparative Human Development
Eugene Raikhel


Email

Undergraduate Primary Contact

Senior Program Manager
Jamie Gentry


Email

Listhost

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