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faculty of the Department of Social Medicine teaches courses for medical
students, undergraduate and graduate students in the humanities and
social sciences, and postdoctoral researchers. The Department serves
as a bridge between Harvard Medical School and Harvard University's
Faculty of Arts and Sciences through the graduate degree programs in
medical anthropology and in the history of medicine. The Department
also reaches out to the Greater Boston/Cambridge community through a
series of lectures and forums that are open to the public.
Academic
Programs
The
Department's academic programs address the core themes of Social Medicine.
Through the Social Studies of Medicine the institutional forms and economic
and political processes that impact medicine are explored. The social
sciences inform the coordination of health and social policies. Medical
Anthropology offers an understanding of how cultural, ethnic, class
and gender differences shape the experience of illness and responses
to care. Medical Ethics fosters a vital examination of the moral aspects
of medical practice and medical technologies and calls for critical
self-reflection as a routine aspect of medical education and care. Through
scholarship in the History of Medicine, a more sophisticated understanding
of the wide array of questions and dilemmas in contemporary medicine
is achieved. Finally, a basic conviction of the faculty is that research
in each of these areas should be "clinically relevant." Members
of the Department move systematically between social research and clinical
application and teaching through the Department's Clinical Programs.
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