SOCI 200 - Medical Sociology

CR: 3
Non-medical factors explain much of the variation and mitigation in prevalence of infectious diseases like COVID- 19, non-communicable diseases like lung cancer, and injuries from accidents and violence, as well as their diagnosis and treatment. The public health perspective of medical sociology emphasizes prevention. The epidemiologic research method of medical sociology permits discovery of sociodemographic factors associated with diseases in populations characterized by disparities related to race/ ethnicity, sex/gender, age, education, occupation, income, and wealth. Topics include socially patterned differences in mortality and morbidity, increasing medicalization of conditions, over-diagnosis and over-treatment, failures to implement evidence-based treatments, end-of-life interventions, and comparisons of profit with not-for-profit health care delivery systems in the U.S. and other countries. V.5