Welcome from the Chair

Dr Gail Henderson, PhD
Professor and Chair

Welcome to our Social Medicine Department website, a resource that we hope will prove useful for those seeking information about our Department.

What is Social Medicine?  The term “social” connotes a broad frame of inquiry regarding the social conditions and characteristics of patients, the social causes of illness, and contexts of medical care; the social responsibilities of the medical profession and other medical and health care institutions; and questions of allocation, distribution, organization and financing of health resources.  To accomplish this mission, the department includes 12 primary faculty and over 50 adjunct and joint appointments, from the fields of medicine, public health, social science, and the humanities.

Who is our audience? Our first mission is to inform the work and thought of physicians and others engaged in medical care at our institution and the State of North Carolina. We offer courses to medical school students, seminars and lectures to residents, fellows, and faculty. We administer the Preventive Medicine Residency Program, and coordinate the joint MD-MPH program for UNC medical students. Nationally, we are one of a small number of Social Medicine departments in schools of medicine, and recognized for leadership in articulating Social Medicine’s teaching, research, and service missions.  Our Social Medicine Reader, an interdisciplinary textbook with material on bioethics, social and cultural factors in health and illness and the organization of medical care, is now in its second edition and used in curriculums throughout the United States.  Our faculty are also active in international research on Social Medicine topics, with current NIH-funded grants in China, Cambodia, and Thailand, and in teaching and service programs in Africa, Latin America, and Europe.

How does Social Medicine relate to other UNC Departments, Centers, and Schools? While relatively small, we are able to leverage our interest and influence through joint faculty appointments in the Schools of Medicine and Public Health, and the College of Arts and Sciences.  Our faculty have leadership roles in a number of UNC centers, including the Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute; the Center for Genomics and Society; and the Center for AIDS Research, among others. The School of Medicine’s new Biomedical Ethics Center, scheduled to open in 2010 in contiguous office space in MacNider Hall, will develop and enhance our expertise in bioethics. 

I was appointed Chair July 1, 2009.  While I joined the department in the 1980s, I was recently recruited to the Chair position to help expand the interdisciplinary faculty and resources within the department, to invigorate our relationships with other academic and community units, and to develop our relationship with the new Biomedical Ethics Center.

With best regards,

Gail E. Henderson, PhD

Professor and Chair