SOC X95J SOC 395J Topics in Seminars in Health 3 Hours
3 Lecture Hours 0 Lab Hours
Not all topics are offered every year. Three lecture hours a week for one semester.
Pre/Corequisites: Graduate standing.
Grading: Student Option
Repeatable for credit: May be repeated for credit when the topics vary.
Academic Level: Doctoral
Topic 1: Sociology of Health and Illness. May be counted toward the health specialization.
Topic 2: The Politics of Health and Long-Term Care Reform. May be counted toward the health and political sociology specializations.
Topic 3: Politics and Policies in Aging Populations. May be counted toward the health and political sociology specializations.
Topic 4: Comparative Social Welfare Systems. May be counted toward the health and social organizations specializations.
Topic 5: US-Mexico Border Health. May be counted toward the health and development specializations.
Topic 6: Sociology of Mental Health. Examines the social causes of mental health. Explores what mental health and mental illness are and how they can be measured, contrasting the social view with the medical, psychiatric, and psychological views. May be counted toward the health specialization.
Topic 7: Health and the Life Course. Health across the life course; the timing and sequencing of life-course experiences and events with respect to health. May be counted toward either the health specialization or the demography specialization.
Topic 8: Biosocial Approaches to Health. Examines the relationships between the natural and social environments and human health and behavior. Explains how disease, functional problems, and disability are not simply biomedical problems but are reflective of a complex array of behavioral factors and social forces. Focuses on the biologically informed sociological models of health in order to understand how genetics and major biological systems interact with social conditions and experiences to influence health and health-related behaviors. May be counted toward either the health specialization or the demography specialization.
Topic 9: Race and Health. Study the links between social conditions, including racial discrimination, and objective indicators of health. Discover the new body of literature documenting how racism becomes embodied and requires new tools and vocabulary to explore such connections. Conduct a detailed survey of the interdisciplinary discrimination-health literature integrating sociological and biological understandings of discrimination exposure, stress physiology, and the links to morbidity and mortality over the life course. Only one of the following may be counted: Humanities, Health, and Medicine 385 (Topic: Race and Health), Sociology 395J (Topic: Race and Health), 395J (Topic 9).
Topic 10: Structural Equations Modeling of Health and the Life Course. May be counted toward the health specialization.
Topic 12: Education, Socioeconomic Status, and Health. Examines why people with higher socioeconomic status have better health than lower status individuals. Explores the links between aspects of social status and health and how education influences health in ways that are varied, present at all stages of adult life, cumulative, self-amplifying, and uniformly positive. May be counted toward the health specialization.
Topic 13: Gender, Health, and Society. Focuses on the gender dimensions of health, illness, and the medical care industry in the United States, with some international comparisons. Examines the role of women as major actors in changing the health-care system, reducing health risks for themselves and their families, and their roles as health-care providers, public administrators, and leaders in the health-care establishment. Also examines the role of different levels and branches of government and the relative power of key nongovernmental actors and the media in the formation of public policy and the definition and framing of our health agenda. May be counted toward either the health specialization or the gender specialization.