Social and Health Systems 3 | Department of Social Medicine

Social and Health Systems 3 (SHS3) seminars engage third-semester medical students with scholarship on health, illness, and medical care in a variety of humanities, social science, and medical fields. Students choose a seminar from a wide range of subjects (see current offerings below). The seminars meet weekly throughout the 3rd semester.

These seminars build on material introduced in the first-year survey course Social and Health Systems 1/2. In SHS3, students immerse themselves in scholarship on a topic of interest. The seminars vary widely in content, encompassing everything from bioethics, health and human rights, and writing narrative medicine to health disparities, global health, the evolution and production of knowledge about disease, and much more. All seminars share objectives, goals, requirements, and competencies common to the SHS3 course. Students refine skills of critical thinking in presentations, seminar discussions, and research and writing assignments.

Barry Saunders is lead Course Director for Social and Health Systems 3. Raul Necochea is SHS 3 co-Course Director.

2022 SHS3 Seminars

Death and Dying in America
Mara Buchbinder, PhD

Controversy in Biomedical Sciences
Barry Saunders, MD, PhD

Genes, Genomics, and Social Justice: Issues to Anticipate
Eric Juengst, PhD

Psychiatry, Ethics and Law
Dan Moseley, PhD

Exploring the ‘Others’: Experiences of Difference, Deviance and Disability
Sue Estroff, PhD

Using the COVID Pandemic to Understand Structural Drivers of Health Disparities
Gabrielle Harris, PhD

Sex/Gender and Sexual and Gender Minority Health: Concepts, Issues, and Inequities
Ashleigh Rich, PhD

The Ethics and Politics of Clinical Research
Gail Henderson, PhD

Gender and Bioethics
Anne Lyerly, MD, MA

Exploring the Impact of Jails and Prisons on Health Outcomes
Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, PhD

Global Health and Medical Ethics
Stuart Rennie, PhD, MA

Pharmaceuticals, Politics & Culture
Jill Fisher, PhD

Unfinished Journey: The American Struggle for Health Care Reform
Jon Oberlander, PhD

Writing Narrative Medicine
Terry Holt, MD, MFA, PhD