ANTH 162 Introduction to Medical Anthropology

This course is an anthropological introduction to the cross-cultural examination of health and illness among humans. The concept of holism is used to examine how various factors, such as culture, biology, linguistic, environmental, political and economic interact to influence wellness, illness and disease. Public health and epidemiologic approaches are considered to illustrate the interdisciplinary nature of the field, and to understand the value of ethnographic data collection on evidence-based evaluations of medical outcomes.

Credits

4

Course Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
1. Recognize medical anthropology’s core theories and methods
2. Explain how social and cultural factors (such as linguistic, religious, sex and gender, kinship, and subsistence) affect health experiences and health outcomes for individuals and groups
3. Discuss medical anthropology’s applied disciplinary and interdisciplinary objectives
4. Describe evidence-based anthropological evaluations of health, medicine and health systems
5. Compare how different medical systems define health and illness, and how categories of disease are constructed and treated cross-culturally