UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine
Selective in Social Medicine
Fall Course Director: Shamsher Samra, MD, MPhil

Students at the IDHEAL student selective

Social, economic, and political forces have significant bearing on the health and well-being of individuals and communities both locally and globally. For most physicians the link between the health and structural forces beyond the clinic walls, such as discrimination, inequity, and injustice, are clear. This connection explains how two individuals with the same disease in two different countries, or two neighborhoods of the same city, may experience vastly different health outcomes. Despite this, medical teaching and practice is heavily skewed toward the biomedical diagnosis, management, and treatment of disease with little emphasis on inequitable social and economic conditions that may underpin illness. The aim of this selective is to expose students to the field of social medicine, empowering future clinicians to engage with the social determinants of health as a part of their future practice.

Session 1 - Structural Violence and Vulnerability
Prof. Philippe Bourgois, Dept of Anthropology

Session 2 - Politics of Medicine and Medical Debt
Shamsher Samra, MD, Mphil, Harbor UCLA Dept of Emergency Medicine
Tarak Trividi, MD, UCLA Dept of Emergency Medicine

Session 3 - Violence and Violence Intervention Programs
Dr. Rochelle Dicker, UCLA Dept of Surgery

Session 4 - Culture and Language in the Clinical Setting
Dr. Kian Preston-Suni, and Dr. Breena Taira, UCLA Dept of Emergency Medicine

Session 5 - Intersection of Incarceration and health and Medical-Legal Partnerships
Jeremy Levenson, Dept of Anthropology UCLA
Mark-Anthony Johnson, Justice LA, Frontline Wellness Network
Shamsher Samra, MD, MPhil and Dennis Hsieh, MD, JD, Harbor-UCLA Dept of Emergency Medicine

Session 6 - Community Organizing and Health and the Practice of Liberation Medicine.
Dr. Linda Sharp Doctors for Global Health and the People's Health Movement

Session 7 - Immigration and Border Imperialism
Dr. Mary Cheffers and Dr. Todd Schneberk, LAC+USC, Department of Emergency Medicine

IDHEAL Suggested Reading List

Recommended reading to learn more about Social Emergency Medicine

Submit Entry to IDHEAL Suggested Reading List

Anti-Racism: Racism and Society

  • So You Want To Talk About Race
    Ijeoma Oluo
    • This book is a great introduction to conversations about race, including explanations of basic terminology like intersectionality and microaggressions.
  • How To Be An Antiracist
    Dr. Ibram X. Kendi
    • In this book, Kendi elaborates the concept of antiracism and interweaves anecdotes from his own experience to illustrate concepts how racist and antiracist policy impact our society.
  • White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
    Robin DiAngelo, PhD
    • DiAngelo describes how white racial insulation that leads whites to lack the stamina and skills to productively engage in conversations about race and racism. She then gives steps for how whites can build their own capacity and skills to begin to contribute to racial justice efforts.
  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
    Michelle Alexander
    • Alexander describes how the U.S. system of mass incarceration is essentially a re-design of former Jim Crow laws in disproportionately targeting and impacting African Americans. She argues that disrupting mass incarceration must be a principle step in achieving racial justice. (There is also a Spanish language version available “El Color de la Justicia” with a preface on how the same phenomenon impacts Latinos.)
  • Just Mercy
    Bryan Stevenson
    • This is the memoir of the early work of lawyer Bryan Stevenson who directs the Equal Justice Initiative. He describes his efforts to defend young black men who have been wrongly accused and held on death row and through his description reveals the racial injustice in our legal system.

Anti-Racism: Racism in Medicine

Anti-Racism: Implicit Bias in Medicine

Global Health

  • Introduction to Global Health Ethics
    Pinto & Upshur
    Introductory
    • This is a case-based discussion of ethical challenges in global health. The chapter on perspectives from the global south is particularly insightful.
  • Reimagining Global Health
    Farmer, et al.
    Introductory
    • This is one of the only complete introductions to the history and context of global health initiatives.
  • The Lassa Ward
    Ross Donaldson
    Introductory
    • A memoir about a UCLA medical student's first experiences with global health and humanitarian work. Each chapter explores global health themes and problems (e.g. corruption, HIV, etc.)
  • Lancet 2035: A World Converging within a Generation
    DT Jamison, et al.
    In Depth
    • The 2013 Lancet special commission's report on the future of global health, written by several very prominent thinkers. They project where global health programming could take us by the year 2035.
  • The Bottom Billion
    Paul Collier
    In Depth
    • This work presents the idea of global economic "poverty traps" that countries fall into and how global institutions can help release them.
  • Disease Control Priority Project
    DT Jamison, et al.
    In Depth
    • Using the Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) as the unit of economic analysis, this paper addresses how countries should approach disease control from a cost effectiveness standpoint. This is a good reference for global health students and an important economic concept to understand.
  • Development as Freedom
    Amartya Sen
    In Depth
    • A landmark discussion of how individual freedoms and economic development are intertwined.

Health and Human Rights

  • Health and Human Rights
    Mann, et al.
    Introductory
    • This paper introduces a framework for understanding how work in health and human rights can be collaborative and are interdependent in the advancement of either field.
  • No Más Bebés
    Tajima-Peña
    In Depth
    • This documentary shares the story of a group of immigrant women who sued LAC+USC for involuntary sterilization during childbirth. This is a particularly important to understand the local history of community trust in Los Angeles County public hospitals.
  • Pathologies of Power
    Paul Farmer
    In Depth
    • This work uses examples from the work of Partners in Health to illustrate the correlation between the lack of social and economic rights to illness and the relationship to human rights.
  • Structural Racism and Supporting Black Lives - The Role of Health Professionals
    Hardeman, et al.
    In Depth
    • A brief description of structural racism and its role in medical care that serves as a call to action for physicians. The impact on health outcomes for minority patients is discussed.
  • Is it worth risking your life? Ethnography, Risk and Death on the US-Mexico border.
    SM Holmes
    In Depth
    • A physician anthropologist and ethnographer from Berkeley, who has written extensively on migrant issues and has actually crossed the border with undocumented research subjects, gives an account of border crossings and the health risks associated with them.
  • Public Health and Human Rights
    Beyrer and Pizer
    In Depth
    • Instead of the more traditional legal approach to health and human rights, this book emphasizes the interplay of human rights and impact on health from a public health/epidemiological perspective, and explores evidence-based approaches to addressing abuses. Many of the book's chapter writers are currently working in the field, as opposed to in academia, lending the work a distinct perspective.

Social Determinants of Health

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