Health, Culture, and Social Justice, Minor

The minor in Health, Culture, and Social Justice provides a social science-grounded curriculum focused on health and well-being. The program provides training for students in how health is shaped by biology, society, and history - as well as how it is distributed unequally across gender, race, class, disability, and other forms of social difference. Through opportunities for experiential learning in and outside of the classroom, students develop tools for bringing about a social world more fully and equitably characterized by health and well-being.

Program Learning Outcomes

Understand how to approach “health” and “healing” from social, critical, temporal/historical, and biological perspectives.
Critically examine how human biology shapes health, mental health, and reproduction.
Describe “biomedicine” as a cultural or ideological system that reflects and sustains inequities in health and well-being.
Identify inequities in health across race, class, disability/ableism, gender, and sexuality, particularly as they are shaped by histories of marginalization and exclusion.

Required Course

The Health, Culture, and Social Justice Minor requires a 4 unit, core class.

Social Justice Approaches to Health

Students must take a course that focuses on themes of social justice and health (for a total of 4 units), selected from the following two courses.

HD 342 - Topics in Health and Social Justice Unit(s): 4

Biological Approaches to Health

Students must take a course that takes up the relationship between biology and health (for a total of 3-4 units), drawn from the following courses.

HD 343 - Topics in Health and Biology Unit(s): 4

Social and Cultural Approaches to Health

Students must take two classes that explore the social and cultural shaping of health (for a total of 8 units), chosen from the following courses. Note that POLS 487 and HIST 376 are topics classes. They can count towards the minor only when specific topics are taught. Please contact the Health, Culture, and Social Justice coordinator for more information.

ANTH 348 - Foundations in Critical Medical Anthropology Unit(s): 4
GEP 325 - Global Food Systems: Scarcity and Sustainability Unit(s): 4
GEP 371 - Social Geography of the American City Unit(s): 3
HIST 376 - Special Topics and Themes in World History Unit(s): 2-4
POLS 487 - Selected Topics in Comparative Politics Unit(s): 4
SOCI 332 - Death and American Culture Unit(s): 4
SOCI 417 - Sociology of Mental Health and Illness Unit(s): 4
SOCI 440 - Sociology of Reproduction Unit(s): 4
SOCI 452 - Health Care, Illness, and Society Unit(s): 4
WGS 335 - Reproductive Justice Unit(s): 4