Illness is more than just biological – medical sociology shows how social factors get under the skin and cause disease

By Jennifer Singh, Associate Professor of Sociology, Georgia Institute of Technology

Health and medicine is more than just biological – societal forces can get under your skin and cause illness. Medical sociologists like me study these forces by treating society itself as our laboratory. Health and illness are our experiments in uncovering meaning, power and inequality, and how it affects all parts of a person’s life.

For example, why do low-income communities continue…

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