Welcome to the Department of Social Medicine
The Department of Social Medicine is committed to the promotion and provision of multi-disciplinary education, leadership, service, research, and scholarship at the intersection of medicine and society, including: the social conditions and characteristics of patients and populations; causes of illness and contexts of medical care; the ethical and social contexts of biomedical clinical and research professionals and institutions; and questions of allocation, organization and financing of health resources including health law and policy.
In Social Medicine, faculty from clinical medicine, public health, the social sciences, and the humanities collaborate to teach core curriculum to medical students, develop innovative research projects, and connect the School of Medicine with the wider University campus. Through our teaching, research, and service we address social dimensions of health and health care in North Carolina and around the globe.
- What's New at UNC Social Medicine
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2013 March
Giselle Corbie-Smith’s Project GRACE Consortium has been selected to receive a 2013 Office of the Provost Engaged Scholarship Award for community-university partnership. This award recognizes UNC-Chapel Hill individuals, units and organizations for their exemplary engaged scholarship.
2013 AprilVisiting Scholar Nikolas Rose was hosted by the Department for several days in late April, in conjunction with the Institute for Arts & Humanities, the College of Arts & Sciences (Interdisciplinary Initiatives Program), and the Center for Bioethics. Rose is Professor of Sociology & Head of the Department of Social Science, Health, & Medicine at Kings College, London. He gave a public talk on April 26 on opening relations between the human/social sciences and the biological sciences. During his visit, he also participated in colloquia with the Moral Economies of Medicine Working Group, the Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry Research Group, a cross-disciplinary graduate reading group, and Duke Department of Cultural Anthropology. Professor Rose writes widely on intersections of biomedicine & sociopolitical forces. His latest book is Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind (Princeton, 2013). His visit stimulated conversations about inter-disciplinary collaborations across the UNC campus as well as expanded collaborations between UNC and Kings College London.
2013 February
The Alan W. Cross Social Medicine Paper Award is now accepting submissions from medical students. Scholarly papers, essays, fiction, poetry, as well as non-print works, are welcome. Deadline for submission is May 24. For more information contact Julia Benoit.
2013 January
Gail Henderson & colleagues published a study in the journal Genome Medicine documenting the enormous diversity of biobanks in the US, raising questions about the best ways to manage and govern them. (Press release here.) Nature Medicine also covers this in its March issue.
2012 DecemberDrawing on ethnographic research conducted in a California genetics clinic, Stefan Timmermans and Mara Buchbinder describe the consequences of the rapid expansion and standardization of state-mandated newborn screening over the past decade.
2012 November
George Sheldon, MD was honored by the American College of Surgeons with a Lifetime Achievement Award—only the second ever awarded by the college. More information here.
