This volume reflects on how anthropologists have engaged in medical education and aims to positively influence the future careers of anthropologists who are currently engaged or are considering a career in medical education. The volume is essential for medical educators, administrators, researchers, and practitioners, those interested in the history of medicine, global health, sociology of health and illness, medical and applied anthropology. For over a century, anthropologists have served in many roles in medical education: teaching, curriculum development, administration, research, and planning. Recent changes in medical education focusing on diversity, social determinants of health, and more humanistic patient-centered care have opened the door for more anthropologists in medical schools. The chapter authors describe various ways in which anthropologists have engaged and are currently involved in training physicians, in various countries, as well as potential new directions in this field. They address critical topics such as: the history of anthropology in medical education; humanism, ethics, and the culture of medicine; interprofessional and collaborative clinical care; incorporating patient perspectives in practice; addressing social determinants of health, health disparities, and cultural competence; anthropological roles in planning and implementation of medical education programs; effective strategies for teaching medical students; comparative analysis of systems of care in Japan, Uganda, France, United Kingdom, Mexico, Canada and throughout the United States; and potential new directions for anthropological engagement with medicine. The volume overall emphasizes the important role of anthropology in educating physicians throughout the world to improve patient care and population health.

Clinical Anthropology 2.0 presents a new approach to applied medical anthropology that engages with clinical spaces, healthcare systems, care delivery and patient experience, public health, as well as the education and training of physicians. In this book, Jason W. Wilson and Roberta D. Baer highlight the key role that medical anthropologists can play on interdisciplinary care teams by improving patient experience and medical education. Included throughout are real life examples of this approach, such as the training of medical and anthropology students, creation of clinical pathways, improvement of patient experiences and communication, and design patient-informed interventions. This book includes contributions by Heather Henderson, Emily Holbrook, Kilian Kelly, Carlos Osorno-Cruz, and Seiichi Villalona.

This important volume includes key papers which outline the history, concepts, research findings and recent controversies in medical anthropology - the cross-cultural study of health, illness and medical care. Among the topics covered are transcultural psychiatry, food and nutrition, anthropology of the body, alcohol and drug use, traditional healers, childbirth and bereavement and the applications of medical anthropology to international health issues, such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic, malaria prevention and family planning. It is a valuable resource not only for scholars and students of medical anthropology but also for health professionals working in multi-cultural settings, or in international medical aid programmes.

Burnout is common among doctors in the West, so one might assume that a medical career in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, would place far greater strain on the idealism that drives many doctors. But, as A Heart for the Work makes clear, Malawian medical students learn to confront poverty creatively, experiencing fatigue and frustration but also joy and commitment on their way to becoming physicians. The first ethnography of medical training in the global South, Claire L. Wendland’s book is a moving and perceptive look at medicine in a world where the transnational movement of people and ideas creates both devastation and possibility. Wendland, a physician anthropologist, conducted extensive interviews and worked in wards, clinics, and operating theaters alongside the student doctors whose stories she relates. From the relative calm of Malawi’s College of Medicine to the turbulence of training at hospitals with gravely ill patients and dramatically inadequate supplies, staff, and technology, Wendland’s work reveals the way these young doctors engage the contradictions of their circumstances, shedding new light on debates about the effects of medical training, the impact of traditional healing, and the purposes of medicine.

This book provides an introduction to the basic concepts, approaches and theories used, and shows how these contribute to understanding complex health related behaviour. Public health policies and interventions are more likely to be effective if the beliefs and behaviour of people are understood and taken into account.

Critical Medical Anthropology presents inspiring work from scholars doing and engaging with ethnographic research in or from Latin America, addressing themes that are central to contemporary Critical Medical Anthropology (CMA). This includes issues of inequality, embodiment of history, indigeneity, non-communicable diseases, gendered violence, migration, substance abuse, reproductive politics and judicialisation, as these relate to health. The collection of ethnographically informed research, including original theoretical contributions, reconsiders the broader relevance of CMA perspectives for addressing current global healthcare challenges from and of Latin America. It includes work spanning four countries in Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala and Peru) as well as the trans-migratory contexts they connect and are defined by. By drawing on diverse social practices, it addresses challenges of central relevance to medical anthropology and global health, including reproduction and maternal health, sex work, rare and chronic diseases, the pharmaceutical industry and questions of agency, political economy, identity, ethnicity, and human rights.

This revised textbook provides students with a first exposure to the growing field of medical anthropology. The narrative is guided by unifying themes. First, medical anthropology is actively engaged in helping to address pressing health problems around the globe through research, intervention, and policy-related initiatives. Second, illness and disease cannot be fully understood or effectively addressed by treating them solely as biological in nature; rather, health problems involve complex biosocial processes and resolving them requires attention to range of factors including systems of belief, structures of social relationship, and environmental conditions. Third, through an examination of health inequalities on the one hand and environmental degradation and environment-related illness on the other, the book underlines the need for going beyond cultural or even ecological models of health toward a comprehensive medical anthropology. The authors show that a medical anthropology that integrates biological, cultural, and social factors to truly understand the origin of ill health will contribute to more effective and equitable health care systems.