SOCR381: Social Factors of Health and Illness

Course Links:

Week 1: Introductions

Articles/Links:

• Class Attendance and Grades:

  • Class Attendance in College A Meta-Analytic Review of the Relationship of Class Attendance With Grades and Student Characteristics

• Medical Sociology and the U.S. Healthcare System:

  • Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association

• Troubles vs. Issues:

  • College Students and Sleep

    • “Sleep is on the back burner”: Working students and sleep

    • School Spillover and College Student Health

  • Nearly 40% of Americans can't cover a surprise $400 expense

• "Health care" vs. "Sick care"

  • Rebecca Onie: What Americans Agree On When it Comes to Health

    • Health Leads

  • Healthcare heals the sick. Better pay keeps them healthy in the first place

  • The $15 Minimum Wage Doesn't Just Improve Lives. It Saves Them.

Week 2: Social Distribution of Disease

Video:

• The Trouble with Antibiotics (Frontline)

  • IUCAT Link

Articles/Links:

• The Limits of Modern Medicine

  • U.S. Life Expectancy Drops for Third Year in a Row, Reflecting Rising Drug Overdoses, Suicides

• The Epidemiological Transition

  • Census Population Pyramid

• The Age of Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases:

  • Antimicrobial (Drug) Resistance

  • Gonorrhea Is Becoming Untreatable, U.N. Health Officials Warn (NPR)

  • Record High Number Of STD Infections In U.S., As Prevention Funding Declines (NPR)

  • The Patient Who Finally Knows Why Her UTIs Won’t Go Away

    • "Remember, I was born before antibiotics,” she reminded me at the end of our conversation. (She was born in 1936, and antibiotics only became widely available in the 1940s.) In just the span of her lifetime, antibiotics have gone from a miracle cure to—in some cases—utterly useless."

• Antibiotic Use and Obesity

  • Two studies tie early antibiotic exposure to increased obesity risk

• Other Examples of Scientific Consensus and the Use of Lobbies to Prevent Policy Change

  • Leaded Gas Was a Known Poison the Day It Was Invented

  • How Exxon went from leader to skeptic on climate change research

• Food Safety

  • Chicken and Food Poisoning

Week 3: Social Distribution of Disease (Social Class)

Video:

• How To Marry The Rich - People Like Us episode #3

• Unnatural causes. In sickness and in wealth

Articles:

• Population Data (Births/Deaths):

  • 2018 World Population Data

• Social Classes in U.S.:

  • Are you in the American middle class?(PEW)

  • How Do You Know When You're Upper Middle Class? (Time)

  • America’s wealth gap between middle-income and upper-income families is widest on record (PEW)

  • 5 takeaways about the American middle class

  • The Effect of Educational Attainment on Adult Mortality in the U.S. (PRB)

  • NYT: Class Matters

• Upward Mobility & Health:

  • Association between children's experience of socioeconomic disadvantage and adult health: a life-course study

  • Does health-selective mobility account for socioeconomic differences in health? Evidence from England and Wales, 1971 to 1991

Week 4: Social Distribution of Disease (Race and Ethnicity)

Videos:

• Unnatural Causes: When the Bough Breaks

• Unnatural Causes: Becoming American

• Moving The Race Conversation Forward

Articles/Links:

• Race, Genes, and Medicine

  • Genes Don't Cause Racial-Health Disparities, Society Does

  • How Racism Creeps Into Medicine

  • Black Patients Miss Out On Promising Cancer Drugs

• How Inequality Gets Under the Skin

  • Death by a Thousand Cuts: Stress Exposure and Black–White Disparities in Physiological Functioning in Late Life

• U.S. Census Race Questions

  • PRB The 2010 Census Questions

  • Pew Research: Census Considers New Approach to Race

• Segregation

  • Interactive Segregation Map (Links to an external site.)

    • #11 Indianapolis, Ind. has a 64.5 white-black dissimilarity score

  • Housing Bias and the Roots of Segregation

  • Growing Up in a Bad Neighborhood Does More Harm Than We Thought

• Hispanic/Latino Health Paradox

  • The “Hispanic mortality paradox” revisited: Meta-analysis and meta-regression of life-course differentials in Latin American and Caribbean immigrants' mortality

  • Trajectories of Aging Among U.S. Older Adults: Mixed Evidence for a Hispanic Paradox

• Racial and Ethnic Health Profiles

  • Health of American Indian or Alaska Native Population

  • Health of Asian or Pacific Islander Population

Week 5/6: Social Distribution of Disease (Sex & Gender/Intersectionality)

Videos:

• Alice Dreger: Is anatomy destiny? | TED Talk

Articles/Links:

• Gender, Sex, and Health

  • Life Expectancy at Birth, by Gender (KFF)

  • Gender and Genetics (WHO)

• Gender Roles and Health

  • Bullying and “Doing” Gender

    • "Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman’s now classic Gender & Society article, “Doing Gender,” notes that “gender is not a set of traits, nor a variable, nor a role, but the product of social doings of some sort.” Gender is not just something we learn to perform in childhood, but something that we are continually performing, although we might not be aware of this process."

  • This is what happens when gender roles are forced on kids

  • Americans see men as the financial providers, even as women’s contributions grow

• Paid Maternity Leave and Other Family Policies

  • Countries Around The World Beat The U.S. On Paid Parental Leave

  • Among 41 nations, U.S. is the outlier when it comes to paid parental leave

• Gender and Health Behavior

  • Binge Drinking Among Youths and Young Adults in the United States: 1979–2006

  • Alcohol Consumption, Gender Identities and Women’s Changing Social Positions

  • Gender empowerment and female-to-male smoking prevalence ratios

  • Are there gender differences in tobacco smoking?

• Gender Bias in Medicine

  • Paula Johnson: His and hers … healthcare | TED Talk

  • The invisible woman? The challenge at the doctor's office every woman needs to know about

• Gender and Sexual Minority Health

  • OutCare (LGBTQ Healthcare Providers)

  • Anticipatory Minority Stressors among Same-sex Couples: A Relationship Timeline Approach

  • Older gays and lesbians face more health disparities, study says

  • Transgender patients face fear and stigma in the doctor's office

• Intersectionality and Health

  • Intersectionality and why it matters to global health

  • Disability Visibility: Intersectionality

  • Crenshaw Urges: Challenge the Narratives

Week 6/7: Our Sickening Environments

Videos:

• Place Matters (IU CAT)

• Trailer for Erin Brockovich

Articles/Links:

• Social Policies and Physical Environments

  • How to Decimate a City (The Atlantic)

    • How I-65/70 shattered Black neighborhoods

    • The Last Holdouts: Community Displacement and Urban Renewal on the IUPUI Campus

      • "The Federal Housing Act was amended in 1959 directing federal aid for “urban renewal areas involving colleges and universities,” unleashing growth by a host of urban universities and igniting the development of many new city campuses. "

  • Where To Find Historical “Redlining” Maps Of Your City

  • How the Fair Housing Act Failed Black Homeowners

  • Redlining was banned 50 years ago. It’s still hurting minorities today.

  • Data analysis: "Modern-day redlining" happening in Detroit and Lansing

  • Inequality Remade: Residential Segregation, Indianapolis Public Schools, and Forced Busing

  • America’s poverty tax

  • Why Detroit is the most expensive city in America to buy car insurance

  • To Restore Civil Society, Start With the Library

• Gentrification

  • Are Gourmet Grocery Stores Gentrifying Neighborhoods?

  • Irrigating the (Food) Desert: A Tale of Gentrification in D.C.

• Participatory Research and Advocacy

  • WE ACT

  • ACE-Alternatives for Community & Environment

  • IKE-Improving Kids' Environment

  • Great Places 2020

  • Kheprw Institute (KI)

  • People’s Planning Academy

• Local Examples of Environmental Hazards and Responses

  • EPA set to begin cleanup of Indiana yards tainted with lead

  • Why Aren’t More Kids Walking To School?

  • Heavily used herbicide tied to shorter pregnancies

  • East Chicago Stops Doing Dangerous Partial Lead Pipe Replacements

  • Not just Detroit: Lead in drinking water plagues schools nationwide

• Asthma Risk (Gene-Environment Factors)

  • The impact of parental history on children’s risk of asthma: a study based on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey-III

  • Epigenetics of asthma.

  • Epigenetic regulation of asthma and allergic disease

  • Exploring the origins of asthma: Lessons from twin studies

• Mapping Environmental Pollutants

  • Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program

  • TOXMAP: Superfund Sites & TRI

• Examples of Dr. Mintus' Research on Neighborhoods

  • Does Neighborhood Disorder Predict Recovery From Mobility Limitation? Findings From the Health and Retirement Study

  • Neighborhood Disorder, Perceived Social Cohesion, and Social Participation Among Older Americans: Findings From the National Health & Aging Trends Study

Week 8: Our Sickening Environments (Social Relationships)

Videos:

• How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime

Articles/Links:

• Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

  • Association between adverse childhood experiences in the home and pediatric asthma

  • How Poverty Affects the Brain (Newsweek)

  • Poverty, Stress, and Brain Development: New Directions for Prevention and Intervention (Links to an external site.)

  • Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

  • Take The ACE Quiz — And Learn What It Does And Doesn't Mean

  • Indiana Youth Institute Highlights Indiana's ACE Scores

  • Screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs): Cautions and suggestions

• Living Alone and Loneliness

  • Loneliness Might Be A Bigger Health Risk Than Smoking Or Obesity

  • Mindfulness-based therapy: A comprehensive meta-analysis

• Deaths of Despair and Rural Aging

  • • For Elderly in Rural Areas, Times Are Distinctly Harder

    • Graying of rural America has policy implications

    • Despair in the American Heartland? A Focus on Rural Health

    • Factors Associated With County-Level Differences in U.S. Drug-Related Mortality Rates

• Natural Disasters and Aging

  • Why Older People Didn't Fare Well In Northern California Wildfires

  • The impact of natural disasters on the elderly.

  • Crisis in Puerto Rico for the Elderly

• Social Relationships & Health Policy

  • More Than A Meal? A Randomized Control Trial Comparing the Effects of Home-Delivered Meals Programs on Participants’ Feelings of Loneliness

  • For socially isolated seniors, Meals on Wheels delivers more than food

  • FMLA Not Really Working For Many Employees

  • Paid Family Leave in the United States

Week 9/10: Social and Cultural Meanings of Illness

Videos:

• Atul Gawande: How to Heal Medicine

• What happens when you have a disease doctors can't diagnose

• Worlds Apart: A Series on Cross-Cultural Health Care; Part 1

• Worlds Apart: A Series on Cross-Cultural Health Care; Part 2

Articles/Links:

• Norms and Values:

  • The Craziest Laws That Still Exist In The United States

  • American Values: Are We Really Divided?

• Contested Illnesses

  • Gulf War Veterans’ Medically Unexplained Illnesses

• Medicine as Social Control

  • First Woman’s Strides in Boston Still Echoing

  • Marc Rudov on "the downside" of a woman president: "You mean besides the PMS and the mood swings, right?

  • Dolly Parton says America is suffering from PMS — ‘presidential mood swings’

• Medicalization

  • Congress Approves Bill To Address Addiction As A Health Problem

  • Amid heroin crisis, GOP contenders reframe addiction as a health crisis

  • The Limits of Personalized Medicine

• Cultural Bias in Medicine

  • The Fertilization Fairytale: “Knight in Shining Armor” Sperm and “Damsel in Distress” Eggs

  • After Angelina Jolie Pitt’s Double Mastectomy, Breast Surgery Awareness Rises

Week 10: Social & Cultural Meanings of Illness

Videos:

• UCLA Professor Abigail Saguy on What's Wrong with Fat? (Links to an external site.)

Articles/Links:

• Obesity and Stigma

  • ‘Fat but Fit’? The Controversy Continues

  • Racial stereotypes fuel low self-esteem that leads to weight gain, study says

  • Where one lives matters in relationship between obesity, life satisfaction

  • Effects of competing news media frames of weight on antifat stigma, beliefs about weight and support for obesity-related public policies

  • Obesity Stigma: Important Considerations for Public Health

• Changing Definitions of "Healthy"

  • In Reversal, the FDA Says ‘Healthy’ Can Return to Kind Bar Packaging

  • Healthy Eating Plate & Healthy Eating Pyramid

  • Authorized Health Claims That Meet the Significant Scientific Agreement (SSA) Standard

Week 11/12: The Experience of Illness

Videos:

• What happens when you have a disease doctors can't diagnose

Articles/Links:

• Illness Experience

  • Keeping a Pain Diary Might Make Your Pain Worse

  • University receives $7.5 million NIH grant for chronic pain research

• Cultural Bias in Medicine

  • Disability and Discrimination at the Doctor’s Office

• Lay Expertise

  • Doctors Should Listen to Patient Instincts

  • Serious Illness: Reconciling Scientific and Subjective Vantage Points

• Disease Politics

  • Disease Politics and Medical Research Funding

  • The ALS ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ is working

Week 12: The Rise and Fall of the Dominance of Medicine

Videos:

• Frontline's Doctor Hotspot

Articles/Links:

• Professionalization

  • American Medical Association

  • AANP State Practice Environment

• Midwifery

  • How much do home births actually cost?

  • Getting Insurance to Pay for Midwives

• Professional Sovereignty

  • AMA launches campaign to hear patients' stories on rising drug prices

• Declining Autonomy

  • Stressed physicans harm our health care system

  • Doctors are surprisingly bad at reading lab results. It’s putting us all at risk.

  • Doctors as disruptors? AMA CEO says medicine’s future demands it

Week 13: Other Providers In and Out of Medicine

Articles/Links:

• Nursing

  • NPR: Injured Nurses

  • Men in Nursing Occupations (Links to an external site.)

• CAM

  • As Opioid Epidemic Rages, Complementary Health Approaches to Pain Gain Traction

  • National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)

Week 14/15: The Pharmaceutical Industry

Videos:

• Ben Goldacre: Battling bad science | TED Talk

• Selling Sickness (IUPUI Library Link)

• The Medicated Child

Articles:

• Big Profits

  • Global pharma market will reach $1.12 trillion in 2022

  • Pharmaceutical industry gets high on fat profits

• DTCA

  • Advertising Motherhood with the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company

    • "Selling the Vegetable Compound was the company’s primary goal, but embedded within their advertisements were also societal expectations for women’s behaviors and roles."

  • Why Does Every Woman in a Viagra Ad Pose Like This? (NYMag)

  • Prescription Drug Advertising

• Drug Costs

  • New U.S. Health Care Spending Estimates Reflect ACA Coverage Expansions and Higher Drug Costs

  • The one that got away: Obamacare and the drug industry

• Drug Trials

  • Drug trials in children: problems and the way forward

Week 15/16: Financing Medical Care and Healthcare Reform

Videos:

• Sick around the World

• "Harry and Louise" Health Care Advertisements

• Operation Coffee Cup: Ronald Reagan's Early War Against "Socialized Medicine"

• The YouToons Get Ready for Obamacare

Articles/Links:

• The Cost of Health Care

  • Current Health Expenditures (WHO)

  • Health Care Costs: A Primer (KFF)

  • Health Costs and Budgets (KFF)

  • National Health Expenditures (CDC)

• Paying for Health Care

  • How do deductibles, coinsurance and copays work?

  • They Paid How Much? How Negotiated Deals Hide Health Care's Cost

    • ""There's one party — the hospital who provides the service. There's a second party — the patient, who receives the service. And there's a third party — the insurance, who pays for the service." That third part is where health care pricing gets really squirrelly.

    • Every hospital has its own master list of charges for different services. Those charges are different from hospital to hospital. But insurance companies don't pay those listed charges. The listed charges are almost fiction ."

• Medicare

  • What Part A & Part B doesn't cover

  • It Pays to Shop: Variation in Out-of-Pocket Costs for Medicare Part D Enrollees in 2016

• Medicaid

  • Status of State Action on the Medicaid Expansion Decision

  • Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP)

• Health Insurance Plans

  • Health insurance plan & network types: HMOs, PPOs, and more

  • 2018 Medical Care Plans Comparison Chart

    • Premiums for HDHP Plan

  • Example of Direct Payment: Doctors Direct provides new patient care options in Fishers

Articles/Links

• The Future of the ACA (Obamacare)

  • Coverage gains among higher-income people suggest the ACA’s individual mandate had big effects on coverage

  • What Do The Midterms Mean For Medicare For All?

  • How ACA Marketplace Premiums Are Changing by County in 2019

  • Many Who Buy ACA Health Plans For 2019 Find Lower Prices And More Choice

  • Obamacare signups are down, but the marketplaces are still healthy

    • "The individual health insurance marketplace survived after the Republicans in Congress defanged the Affordable Care Act in 2017, wiping out the individual mandate. That rule had incentivized people to get health insurance by penalizing those who decided to forgo it."