This minor encourages students to look beyond disparities in health outcomes and focuses upstream on the reasons that inequities exist. Such a focus redirects attention to the sources of inequality in systems and structures, rather than in individuals, groups, or cultures. Courses illuminate how resource inequalities, cultural stigma and blame, and institutional discrimination combine to create widespread inequities in health outcomes-which are exacerbated by lack of access to health care. Topics include social contributors to mental and physical illness, social influences on aging, medicine as social control, the organization of health care systems, international and comparative health beliefs and structures, the sources of illness for profit “manufactured” by many industries, and the medical-industrial complex that underlies much of the structure of health care in the U.S.

Minimum hours required for the minor: 15