We utilize a collaborative participatory approach involving learners, community informants and faculty in the development of the social medicine (SM) case studies. This helps ensure perspective-taking and critical analysis in “clinical” problem solving related to social determinants of health (SDH). The SM case studies will take us on a journey beyond the walls of exam rooms and hospitals to explore how poverty, racism, and social exclusion shape health outcomes. It is our intention to provide these case studies to medical educators and stakeholders as tools for discussion and analysis, and as a springboard to additional pedagogical inquiry into social medicine. The case studies will have wide application across all the health professions from nursing, pharmacy, and dentistry to allied health. Check out our submission page if you have a story to share and browse the published case studies in 2019.
A note on social medicine
Social medicine (not the same as socialized medicine) embraces population health, particularly the social and economic conditions that profoundly impact health, disease and the practice of medicine. Clinicians have intimate knowledge of the lives of their patients and are uniquely suited to understand the social and political dimensions of their patients’ problems. Social medicine is borne of the understanding that while good health is beyond the purview of the individual clinician, society’s collective efforts are richer when clinicians lend their voices and help shoulder the burden of change.