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Since its origins
in 1982 the Program in Medical Anthropology has supported a significant
part of the Department of Social Medicine's research, projects, training
programs and activities in public service.
Medical Anthropology
is the study of illness and medical systems cross-culturally. Through
analysis of social institutions, dynamics of social power and collective
meanings, faculty of the Program in Medical Anthropology describe how
medical knowledge and therapeutic action are differently distributed
across gender, age, ethnic and class lines, and how local forms of suffering
are constructed. Their work has contributed to understanding of the
cultural shaping of illness experiences for disorders from depression
and cancer to chronic pain and chronic fatigue syndrome. Faculty have
advanced empirical understanding of the social roots of tuberculosis,
AIDS and depression. In addition, faculty have contributed to basic
theory concerning issues such as illness narratives; the moral aspects
of suffering; the social course of disease; comparative cross-cultural
studies of medical systems; the social transformation of medical and
clinical practice; and bioethics.
The Medical Anthropology
Program's teaching activities link together the Department of Social
Medicine and the Department
of Anthropology and include courses for Harvard undergraduates,
graduate students, medical students and postdoctoral fellows. Faculty
in Medical Anthropology teach many of the selectives in social medicine
for Harvard medical students, including courses on the social roots
of disease; culture, poverty and infectious disease; international health
and human rights; women's health; and social and ethical dimensions
of new biotechnologies. The Friday Morning Seminar has been a central
feature of the Program in Medical Anthropology. The seminar has met
weekly since 1984, bringing together faculty, fellows, graduate students
and interested clinicians to explore issues of culture and mental health.
The Program's research
and advocacy activities are organized in several programs including
the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change, Programs in Culture
and Mental Health and the Center for the Cultural Studies of Biomedicine.
Several of these programs are closely affiliated with the World Health
Organization. At present faculty are conducting research in Haiti, Peru,
Russia, Indonesia and China as well as in several communities in Boston,
New York, Chicago and elsewhere in the U.S.
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