Mission Statement

1. The primary mission of the Department of Social Medicine is to inform the work and thought of physicians and others on:the social conditions and
   • characteristics of patients, the social causes of illness, and the social 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.
2. Members of the faculty will apply their various disciplines, especially, to:
   • problems of health disparity, disability, and disadvantage; and
   • health and medical care problems of North Carolina.
3. This mission will carried out through:
   • research and scholarship;
   • participation in the wider community of scholars concerned with the study of health, illness, disease and society;
   • education of medical students, residents, the medical faculty, and practicing physicians;
   • service to the university community and to the community at large;
   • scheduled and informal interaction, collaboration, and other forms of mutual education within the department; and
   • professional interaction with clinical faculty in the School of Medicine.
4. The faculty will assume primary responsibility for teaching in certain areas within medical education, including:
   • anthropology and cultural studies of health;
   • medical sociology;
   • health care organization;
   • preventive medicine;
   • epidemiology and biostatistics;
   • health economics;
   • public policy in health and medical care;
   • medicine and the law;
   • history of medicine and public health;
   • medical, bio-, and research ethics; and
   • literature and medicine.
5. Social Medicine faculty will extend the reach of the department through teaching in other units and schools of the University, participation in interdisciplinary scholarship, and professional involvement with organizations that represent their core disciplines.
6. Two additional principles will guide the department in forming (recruiting and replacing) the faculty:
   • the faculty will represent a mix of disciplines that can contribute uniquely to the department’s social medicine mission;
   • the department’s functional responsibilities will be carried out in an exemplary manner; therefore, teaching ability in one or more of the above subject areas will be an important consideration when selecting new faculty.

* Initially adopted in 1987 at a Departmental retreat at the Quail Roost Conference Center, Revised April 2004.