Medical Humanities - Health Studies Program

Course Catalogue

For up-to-the-minute course listings, including enrollment information, see The Office of the Registrar.

Anthropology:

A337 African American Health Care (3 cr.)
An anthropological perspective on the study of African American health beliefs and practices. This course examines the major theories for African American health as well as the relevant issues for understanding these health-care practices in delivering health services. Local and national health-care issues will be examined.

B370 Human Variation (3 cr.)
Variation within and between human populations in morphology, gene frequencies, and behavior. Biological concepts of race, race classification, along with other taxonomic considerations and evolutionary processes acting on humans in the past, present, and future.

E421 The Anthropology of Aging (3 cr.)
This course explores age and the aging process cross-culturally by looking at the specific cultural context in which individuals age and by analyzing similarities and differences across cultures.

E445 Medical Anthropology (3cr.)
A cross-cultural examination of human biocultural adaptation in health and disease, including biocultural epidemiology; ethnomedical systems in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease; and sociocultural change and health. Also available for graduate credit.

A460 Diseases and Human Evolution (3cr.)
This course will illustrate human bio-cultural adaptations to pathogens, including the origin, evolution, distribution, genetics, heredity, and diversity of both the pathogens and the human groups they affect.

B480 Human Growth and Development (3 cr.)
The study of human growth and development from a biocultural perspective including the physical mechanisms, and social, cultural, and environmental factors that lead to normal growth and development throughout the human life cycle. Casual factors, patterns of expression, and methods of assessment are stressed.

Communication Studies:

C392 Health Communication (3 cr.)
Exploration of the communication competencies needed by health-care professionals. Emphasizes interviewing; verbal and nonverbal skills; group interaction; and intercultural, interprofessional, therapeutic, and organizational communication. Analyzes communication problems encountered in health care and the development of coping strategies.

C410 Health Provider-Consumer Communication (3 cr.)
This course is designed to teach communication skills and practices related to health-care discourse, by examining transactional communication within health-care contexts. Topics covered in this course focus directly upon interpersonal dialogue between health-care providers and patients.

Economics:

E307 Current Economic Issues: Health Economic Issues (3 cr.)
This course examines the relevance of economics in health and medical care, characteristics of the health care market, present issues such as access to care and escalating costs, financing of health care, the role of current US government-administered programs, the advent of managed care companies, and an international comparison of health and health-related expenditures. No prerequisites; economic theory used to analyze health markets will be introduced in class.

E387 Health Economics (3 cr.)
This course applies economic theory to the study of policy issues in health economics. Specific issues include: determinants of demand for medical services and insurance; training and pricing behavior of physicians; pricing behavior and costs of hospitals; market and regulative approaches.

English:

L431 Topics: Literature and Medicine (3 cr.)

History:

H364 History of Medicine & Public Health (3 cr.)
History of medicine and public health in Europe and America, including ancient and medieval background, with focus on the development of modern health sciences since 1800.

H374 History of Science and Technology II (3 cr.)
An in-depth study of scientific and technological developments from the Scientific Revolution to the present. Special emphasis on transportation, communication, military and medical technology, physics, biology, and astronomy and on the figures involved in key breakthroughs. Consideration of governmental involvement in science.

H425 Topics: History of Humanitarian Assistance (3 cr.)
This seminar will examine the social and political reform movements that grew out of the discoveries in biomedical sciences and their applications during the 19th and 20th centuries. Today the benefits of medical discoveries are usually thought of in individual terms. But this is partly in reaction to some of the ambitious, overzealous and naive attempts at broader social reform based on new discoveries in the 19th and 20th centuries. Among these ideologies and social reform movements were birth control, natalism, social darwinism, social hygiene and eugenics.

Medical Humanities/Health Studies:

MH301 Perspectives on Health, Disease and Healing (3 cr.)
The course utilizes the perspectives of the humanities and social science disciplines to provide students with a broader understanding of the many facets of health and disease, suffering and dying, as well as the art and science of healing.

MH492 Topics in Medical Humanities and Health Studies (3 cr.)

MH495 Independent Project/Seminar in Medical Humanities and Health Studies (3 cr.)
Each student pursuing a minor degree in the Medical Humanities and Health Studies Program who has completed at least 9 credit hours toward the degree will take a seminar or be given the opportunity to develop a research or applied project related to the interests of the Medical Humanities and Health Studies Committee. This seminar or project will allow the student to apply the knowledge gained from the course work taken in the Medical Humanities and Health Studies Program, serving to tie together the humanistic and social scientific bases of health care in a directed endeavor of interest to the student. The student should contact the chairperson to arrange the details of this independent project.

MH498 Readings in Medical Humanities and Health Studies (1-3 cr.)

Nursing:

S474 Applied Health-Care Ethics (3 cr.)
This course is designed to introduce the student to major ethical theory, principles, and models for the recognition, analysis, and resolution of ethical dilemmas in health-care practice.

Philosophy:

P393 Biomedical Ethics (3 cr.)
A philosophical consideration of ethical problems that arise in current biomedical practice, e.g., with regard to abortion, euthanasia, determination of death, consent to treatment, and professional responsibilities in connection with research, experimentation, and health care delivery.

Religious Studies:

R384 Religion, Ethics and Health (3 cr.)
This course explores select issues in bioethics in light of western religious themes of life’s sacredness, human vulnerability, communal interdependence, creative purpose, covenantal duty and prophetic justice. How should these and other religious commitments inform contemporary practices of health care in the United States? How do the moral teachings of Catholic, Jewish and Protestant traditions shape today’s debates about informed consent, medical experimentation, respect for persons, the fertility industry, reproductive choice, therapeutic cloning, embryonic stem cell research, women’s health, the refusal of treatment, palliative care, assisted suicide, unequal access to health care, rising health care costs, and the distribution of health care more generally?

SPEA:

H316 Environmental Science and Health (3 cr.)
A study of human interaction with the environment and potential impacts of environmental agents on health and safety. Hazards from natural sources and human activities that contaminate our air, land, water, food, homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces are examined. Environmental control activities, including pollution control technology and policy, are also examined.

H320 Health Systems Administration (3 cr.)
An overview of the U.S. health care delivery system. It examines the organization, function, and role of the system; current system problems; and alternative systems or solutions.

H322 Principles of Epidemiology (3 cr.)

H354 Health Economics (3 cr.)

H420 Health Policy (3 cr.)

Sociology:

R285 AIDS and Society (3 cr.)
This course examines the HIV/AIDS epidemic from a sociological perspective. Students will explore how social factors have shaped the course of the epidemic and the experience of HIV disease. The impact of the epidemic on health care, government, and other social institutions will also be discussed.

R321 Women & Health (3 cr.)
A review of the relationships among cultural values, social structure, disease, and wellness, with special attention focused on the impact of gender role on symptomatology and access to health care. Selected contemporary health problem areas will be examined in depth. Alternative models of health care delivery will be identified and discussed.

R327 Sociology of Death and Dying (3 cr.)
This course examines inevitable and salient features of the human condition. Historical evaluation of images and attitudes toward death, the medicalization of death, the human consequences of high-tech dying, the role of the family in caring for dying loved ones, the emergence and role of hospices, the social roles of funerals, grief and bereavement, euthanasia and suicide, the worlds of dying children and grieving parents, and genocide are major issues that are addressed. Two of the major themes of the course revolve around the idea that the way we die is a reflection of the way we live; and, that the study of dying and death is an important way of studying and affirming the value of life.

R381 Social Factors in Health and Illness (3 cr.)
Examines the social aspects of health and illness, including variations in the social meanings of health and illness, the social epidemiology of disease, and the social dimensions of the illness experience.

R382 Social Organization of Health Care (3cr.)
Surveys the nature of and recent changes in the health care delivery system in the United States. Patient and professional roles and the characteristics of different health care settings are explored. Current debates about the nature of the professions and professional work are emphasized.

R410 Alcohol, Drugs, and Society (3 cr.)
This is a survey of the use and abuse of alcohol, including extent of use, history of use and abuse, “biology” of alcohol, alcoholism as a problem, legal actions, and treatment strategies.

R415 Sociology of Disability (3 cr.)
An examination of current models of disability and of disability at the interpersonal and societal level. Topics include recent legal, social, and educational changes; the ways in which people with disabilities interact with the non-disabled; the role played by relatives and caregivers; and the image of people with disabilities in film, television, and other media.

R485 Sociology of Mental Illness (3 cr.)
A survey of current problems in psychiatric diagnosis, the social epidemiology of mental illness, institutional and informal care-giving, family burden, homelessness, and the development and impact of current mental health policy. Cross-cultural and historical materials, derived from the work of anthropologists and historians, are used throughout the course.

Contact Information
Medical Humanities - Health Studies Program
Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
425 University Boulevard, Cavanaugh Hall Room 406
Indianapolis, IN 46202-5140
(317) 274-4740

Medical Humanities - Health Studies Program

IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI IU School of Medicine

Course Catalogue

IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI
IU School of Medicine