Section Annual Report for Medical Sociology
This annual report covers the period of section activity from September 2017 to August 2018 and a fiscal year from January 2018 to December 2018. The report is typically completed by the immediate past chair of each section as it covers the period this person served as chair. However, it is often completed in consultation with other officers and it may be submitted by anyone on the section council.
Sections that do not file an Annual Report will have their budget allocation withheld until a complete report is received. Please submit the report by November 15.
Section Governance Provide details of your section’s governance activity during the period between September 2017 and August 2018.
Business Meeting Copy and paste below (or attach separately) the agenda and approved meeting minutes from the section business meeting which include a count of members present and summary of decisions made at this meeting.
The Medical Sociology section’s major activities for 2017-18 include the following:
• Published four section newsletters (attached). • Selected recipients for six section awards: Louise Johnson Scholar, Howard B. Kaplan Memorial Award, Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation Award, Donald W. Light Award for Applied or Public Practice of Sociology, Eliot Freidson Outstanding Publication Award, and Leo G. Reeder Award for Distinguished Contribution to Medical Sociology. • Established a section Google drive and migrated our policy and practice documents from a Dropbox folder onto the drive. All Council members reviewed and, as appropriate, revised their position descriptions. We established a process for recording awards nominations. • Pursuant to the 2017 Council meeting discussion, revised awards descriptions to require the nominators and nominees be section members. • Submitted a by-laws amendment to the ASA Committee on Sections which was approved and included on the 2018 election ballot. The amendment provides guidance on conflicts-of-interest. It was approved by section members. • Identified and approved a new newsletter editor. • The Chair (Jane McLeod) and Secretary-Treasurer (Danielle Bessett) worked with ASA Director of Finance (Les Briggs) to review the investment structure for the Donald Light Award for Applied or Public Practice of Medical Sociology and for other section accounts. • Organized six ASA sessions: o Race, Racism, and Health: Patterns and Processes) o The Politics of Health o Sociology of Medical Education o Sociological Research and the Reduction of Health Inequalities o Health, Health Care, and New Technologies
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o Roundtables
• Partnered with the section on Sex and Gender for a co-sponsored session on Gender, Health, and Medicine. • Planned and held the section awards ceremony, awards dinner, and section reception. • With Council assistance, section members organized a tour of the National Board of Medical Examiners. Twenty two section members attended.
As appropriate, Council members consulted via email on these and other matters.
We held our annual Business Meeting on Sunday, August 12, 2018 from 9:30-10:10am. The agenda for our meeting is attached (p.2 of our Appendix), and the 2018 Council minutes and Council reports referenced therein follow (on p.3 and pp.4-25, respectively).
Council Meeting Copy and paste below (or attach separately) the agenda and approved meeting minutes of all Council Meetings conducted between August 2017 and September 2018. Minutes must include a list of council members present and a summary of decisions made. Minutes are not a transcript of proceedings but a listing of what discussions took place and official actions taken.
The Medical Sociology Section Council met on Sunday, August 12, 2018 from 7-8:15am. 12 current Council members attended, along with 5 incoming Council members and 1 affiliated section member. The agenda for our meeting is attached (p.27), and the 2018 Business meeting minutes follow (p.28-30).
The Previous Year Describe section activities during the period between September 2017 and August 2018.
• Membership recruitment and retention – What efforts did the section make to retain members and reach out to new members? What were the results of the efforts?
Our membership chair, Corinne Reczek, worked tirelessly through the year to recruit and retain section members. She distributed messages to the section listserv, encouraging members to recruit new members and to offer student memberships. She contacted former section members who had not renewed their memberships to encourage them to do so. As a result of her efforts, we have kept membership very near the 1,000-member mark.
• Communications – How does the section communicate with its members? Did it begin using any new technologies or strategies? If so, were they effective? Include links to the section website, newsletters, and any other electronic media used.
The section communicates with members primarily through the section listserv and our newsletter. We send weekly announcements to members through the listserv. We publish four newsletters each year. We attach copies of the 2017-18 newsletters to this report.
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• Mentoring – What, if any, mentoring opportunities does the section offer to students, early career faculty, nonfaculty, etc.?
The section does not offer a formal mentoring program. We are, nevertheless, a welcoming section that encourages participation and engagement across our full membership. We have two regular student Council members who participate in our Council meetings, prepare student- oriented features for the newsletter, and organize a meet-and-greet with the recipient of our distinguished contributions award (the Leo G. Reeder Award). Our nominations committee has a student member who participates fully in crafting the election slate. Each year, our nominations committee strives to achieve a slate that represents the full range of substantive, theoretical, and methodological interests in medical sociology, and that includes faculty at all ranks and members who hold nonacademic positions.
• Programming – Provide an overview of the section’s programming at the annual meeting, scholarly/ professional development activities outside of the annual meeting, development of substantive resources, partnerships with other sections or groups, etc.
The section offered eight sessions at the 2018 ASA meeting, including:
Race, Racism, and Health: Patterns and Processes
The Politics of Health
Sociology of Medical Education (2 sessions)
Sociological Research and the Reduction of Health Inequalities
Health, Health Care, and New Technologies
A co-sponsored session (with Sex and Gender) on Gender, Health, and Medicine
Our section roundtables session.
As noted, we also held our annual awards ceremony, awards dinner, and business meeting.
The section offered three other events at the annual meeting that may be of interest to ASA. Section member Monica Cuddy organized a tour of the National Board of Medical Examiners which was held on Monday, August 13th. Council member Katrina Kimport organized a panel on sociology in practice settings that was offered as part of ASA’s symposium on sociological practice. Council member Tom Mackie participated in organizing a pre-conference on policy engagement, with special emphasis on health- related research.
Plans for the Coming Year Describe section plans for the period between September 2018 and August 2019. These plans should align with the 2018 budget and proposed 2019 budget below.
• Membership recruitment and retention – What efforts will the section make to retain members and reach out to new members? What are the goals of the efforts?
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We will continue our usual efforts to recruit and retain members.
For the past several years, we have sponsored a section book raffle to raise funds for our student awards. The raffle appears to have outlived its usefulness (we still sell many tickets and receive outstanding book contributions but fewer and fewer people want to take books home with them). We plan to suspend the book raffle and, in its place, develop a new fundraising strategy. The funds will go to our student awards. Although not directly a membership recruitment effort, offering a vibrant set of student awards increases the attraction of a section membership to students. Fundraising campaigns also have the potential to increase commitment to the section among current members.
• Communications – How does the section plan to communicate with its members? Does the section plan on using any new technologies or strategies? If so, how?
We will continue our practice of weekly listserv announcements and quarterly newsletters. In addition, our webmaster has created a “members update” page for our website that members can use to update each other about significant development in teaching, research, and service.
• Mentoring – What efforts will the section make to mentor students, early career faculty, nonfaculty, etc.?
We do not have current plans to expand specific mentoring activities.
• Programming – Provide an overview of the section’s upcoming plans for programming at the annual meeting, scholarly/ professional development activities outside of the annual meeting, development of substantive resources, partnerships with other sections or groups, etc.
In line with the theme of the conference (Engaging Social Justice for a Better World), the Medical Sociology section will offer a session entitled, “Health equity, social justice, and social movements.” In addition, we will host the second of two joint sessions with the Sociology of Sex and Gender section, which will be titled, “Gender, Medicine, and Health.” Finally, we will offer a session that is tentatively titled, “Hacking health: Work-arounds, opt-outs, DIY medicine, and consumer resistance.” If section membership reaches or surpasses 1,000, we will offer a session on health in social context.
2018 Finances Provide a narrative on how the 2018 budget matched with actual expenses and income from 2018. Please account for any substantive differences.
The 2018 budget submitted by the previous S/T in the 2017 annual report contained two errors: 1. It included as income sponsorship that was to be rolled over from a previous year. With that information corrected, we exceeded our planned sponsorship income by $500. 2. Expenses associated with the Kaplan award were shown against the General Funds, rather than the Kaplan award account.
In 2018, we have come close to our estimated income, and we expect that the outstanding 2018 dues will reduce the deficit incurred this year. As noted above, we exceeded our expected sponsorship income by $500. Our estimates for the section budget allocation and dues income were based on a membership of 1,000+, and thus we fell slightly short in this regard.
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Our actual expenses hewed closely to our proposed expenses in most respects; we neglected to budget for award dinners for students who do important work on behalf of the section (the listserv manager and the book raffle chair) because these posts are not always held by students. The awards dinner itself was about $20 more expensive per person than expected, although our chair worked very hard to find a reasonably-priced restaurant for this event in high-cost Philadelphia. And the annual reception held at the hotel was nearly $700 more than we expected; we are looking into reasons for this discrepancy to learn from them.
Although it looks as though the proposed expenses exceeded our planned income by $2,530, we note that we were taking into account event sponsorship from Wiley-Blackwell/Sociology of Health & Illness of $2,000 rolled over from a previous year. (See point 1 above.) For this reason, what appears as a $2,782 deficit in actual expenses is actually a $782 deficit (as of 10/31/18), almost entirely attributable to the higher hotel reception and the remaining outstanding dues. As noted above, we will be looking very closely at this expense for 2018 and thinking carefully about 2019, when the location (NYC) is expected to be much more expensive, but where we may be better able to once again partner with the Mental Health section (which was not possible this year due to session timing).
The tentatively reconciled 2018 budget can be found on p.31 of our Appendix.
Budget for 2019 Creating a budget will help the section plan its activities for the year. Your 2019 budget should reflect the narrative in the “Plans for the Coming Year” section. The following table will help you organize and calculate a budget.
Expected 2019 Expenditures Expense Category Budgeted Amount Details (use the cells in this column to provide information on each expense) Annual Meeting Reception $4,900 Use this space to provide details Other Meeting Expenses $ 500 Student Council Member Travel ($250x2)
Awards Student Awards $ 1250 Johnson and Simmons award costs Award Plaques $ 500 Use this space to provide details Other $ 1170 Student lunch $400 & $770 Award dinner
Communications Website $ 0 Use this space to provide details Newsletter $ 0 Use this space to provide details Other $ 0 Use this space to provide details
Miscellaneous
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Membership $ 0 Use this space to provide details Other $ 600 US-UK Conference subsidy
Total 2019 Budgeted $ 8,920 Sum estimated expenses Expenditures
Estimated 2019 Income Income Category Estimated Amount Details Section Allocation – Base $ 1000 ASA Office will provide figure mid-October. See note 1 on how this figure is calculated. Section Allocation – Per Member $ 2040 ASA Office will provide figure mid-October. See note 2 on how this figure is calculated. Premium Dues $ 3020 ASA Office will provide an estimated figure. See note 3 on how this figure is calculated. Contributions Misc
Total 2019 Estimated Income Sum estimated income
Budget Summary Estimated Remaining Balance at Accounting for all estimated costs for the end of December 2018 $ 25,292 remainder of the year, estimate the remaining balance. Total 2019 Estimated Income +$ 8,560 Fill in from the Estimated Income table above Total 2019 Budgeted Fill in from the Budgeted Expenditures table - $ 8,920 Expenditures above
To calculate net amount, sum Lines 1 and 2, Total = $ 24,932 then subtract Line 3.
Notes The following explains how income is calculated. By October 20, the ASA Office will provide the following information, so sections do not have to calculate estimates themselves.
1 Section Allocation – Base Based off of this year’s final membership count as of September 30, sections receive a base allocation as follows: • Sections with 300 or more members receive a base allocation of $1,000 • Sections with fewer than 300 members and more than 200 members receive: [# of section members - 100] x $5 • Sections with fewer than 199 members receive a base allocation of $500
2 Section Allocation – Per Member Based off of this year’s final membership count as of September 30, sections receive two dollars for each member.
3 Premium Dues The base rate is $10 for regular members, $5 for students and $10 for associate, low income, and high school teacher members. Any dues raised by the sections in excess of the base rate go directly to the section throughout the year based on actual membership numbers. Subscription Fees for Section Journals are not added here.
To see current and historical membership counts, please visit www.asanet.org/SectionMembership. Please note that membership year ends on September 30.
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Miscellaneous Is there any additional information about the section or the area of study you would like to share with the Committee on Sections? Is there any feedback you would like to provide to the Committee on Sections?
We could not get all of the Estimated Income fields on p.7 of this report to accept figures for Contributions nor the total income. They are as follows: Estimated contributions $2,500 Total Projected Income $8,560 Please also note that the figures for income preceded the information provided by ASA and instead (like the 2019 expenses) reflect the budget approved by Council in August 2018.
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APPENDIX FOR MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY SECTION 2018 ASA ANNUAL REPORT
Table of Contents 2018 Medical Sociology Section Council Meeting Agenda 9 2018 Medical Sociology Section Council Meeting Minutes 10 2018 Reports: Chair 14 Secretary-Treasurer 15 Appendix: Light Award Finances 21 Chair-Elect/Plans for 2019 Meeting 22 Student Representatives 22 Membership Committee 23 Nominations Committee 23 Teaching and Learning Committee 24 Health Policy Committee 24 Career and Employment Committee 25 Publications Committee & Freidson Award 26 Reeder Award Process 26 Simmons Award 27 Light Award 28 Kaplan Memorial Award 28 Johnson Scholar 28 Newsletter 29 Book Raffle 30 Website 31 JHSB Editors 31 2018 Medical Sociology Section Business Meeting Agenda 34 2018 Medical Sociology Section Business Meeting Minutes 35 2018 Reconciled Section Budget 38 2018-19 Council Roster 39 Section Newsletters Fall 2017 43 Winter 2018 52 Spring 2018 62 Summer 2018 69 Fall 2018 78
8 2018 MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY COUNCIL MEETING AGENDA Sunday, August 12, 2018 7:00 ‐ 8:15 am
1. Welcome and introductions – Jane McLeod 2. Review of 2018 agenda – Jane McLeod 3. Approval of 2017 Council Meeting minutes – Danielle Bessett 4. Report from Chair – Jane McLeod 5. Report from Secretary/Treasurer – Danielle Bessett 6. Committee Reports a. Membership – Corinne Reczek b. Nominations Committee – Andrew London c. Teaching Committee – Ophra Leyser‐Whalen d. Health Policy Committee – Thomas Mackie e. Career and Employment – Katrina Kimport f. Publications Committee & Eliot Freidson Outstanding Publication Award – Claire Decoteau
7. Chair‐Elect report / plans for 2019 meeting – Brea Perry 8. Student representatives report – Stela Guzman and Julia Bandini 9. 2019 Leo G. Reeder Award (process not outcome) – Brea Perry 10. Roberta Simmons Award – Cathy Liu 11. Donald W. Light Award for Applied or Public Practice of Medical Sociology – Debra Umberson 12. Howard B. Kaplan Memorial Award –Richard Carpiano 13. Louise Johnson Scholar – Richard Carpiano 14. Raffle report – Sara Rubin 15. Newsletter Editor’s Report – Ann Bell and Barret Michalec 16. Webmasters’ Report –Simon Geletta 17. JHSB report: Richard Carpiano and Brian Kelly 18. Schedule of Section activities – Jane McLeod 19. Other business: a. Endowment funds update and plans – Danielle Bessett b. Recommending new sponsors for future ASA receptions (2019 NYC, 2020 San Francisco) – Council members 20. Adjournment
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Minutes of the 2018 Medical Sociology Council Meeting Sunday, August 12, 2018 7:00 - 8:15 am NOTE: Minutes not yet approved by Medical Sociology Section.
Present: Council: Jane McLeod, Brea Perry, Ophra Leyser-Whalen, Hui “Cathy” Liu, Julia Bandini, Corinne Reczek, Andrew London, Cirila Estela Vasquez Guzman, Barret Michalec; Katrina Kimport, Richard Carpiano, Danielle Bessett; Incoming Council: Jen-nan Read, Deborah Carr, Evan Roberts, Miranda Waggoner, Aalap Bommaraju; Book Raffle Chair: Sara Rubin Welcome and introductions: Jane McLeod opened the meeting by inviting those present to introduce themselves. She welcomed new Council members and clarified that they would participate in the meeting as non-voting members, as their terms officially begin at the end of the business meeting later that morning. Review of 2018 Council Meeting agenda: McLeod reviewed the agenda for the meeting. Approval of the 2017 Council Meeting minutes: Danielle Bessett circulated minutes from 2017 Council Meeting (taken by her predecessor Janet Shim) by email in advance of the meeting and invited amendments. Miranda Waggoner noted that she was present throughout the meeting, not absent as the minutes suggested; the correct wording was that she had nothing to add beyond her report. Jane McLeod made a motion to accept the minutes with the correction; Richard Carpiano seconded. Eight voting members voted to approve; two abstained; none against. Report from Chair: McLeod directed council to her report. She thanked Bessett for assistance in preparing the Council materials, Deb Underwood for her advice and section stewardship as past chair, Barret Michalec and Ann Bell as outgoing newsletter editors after several years of outstanding service. She thanked Lilla Pivnick for her continuing efforts as newsletter editor, and Sara Rubin for taking over book raffle this year. She also thanked the outgoing section council members: Deb Umberson, Rich Carpiano, Cirila Vasquez Guzman, Andrew London, Corinne Reczek, and Thomas Mackie. Report from the Secretary/Treasurer: Bessett directed council to her report. She briefly reviewed the 2019 budget and noted that Council needed to vote on it. McLeod motioned to approve the 2019 budget, Carpiano seconded. All twelve present voting members voted aye; none abstained nor against. Leyser-Whelan asked about the long-term effects of the overspending, and Bessett agreed this requires a long-term plan to insure that revenues are better matched to expenses. London asked if the Council had a plan to increase endowments; McLeod asked the group to defer until the planned discussion under other business. Committee Reports
Membership: Reczek noted that membership is very important for section revenue as well as for sessions at the annual meeting. The section had 964 members as of that time, still under the 1,000 member mark and reflective of lower numbers across the sections. The student drive has been very helpful in keeping the numbers above the 900-mark. She encouraged members to seek additional
10 members and noted that membership may rise with next year’s popular meeting location of New York City. McLeod noted that the gift membership option ends prematurely for the section’s needs. Nominations Committee: London offered his thanks to those who participated in the elections. He noted that there is a deep list of potential candidates for the future. McLeod suggested that the outgoing committee chair (London) be sure to add these people to the section’s google drive. Teaching Committee: Leyser-Whalen has concentrated on course-related undergraduate research experiences in her recent pieces and welcomes additional suggestions for content. Career and Employment Committee: Kimport reported that the newsletter columns have been very effective and have prompted a positive response. ASA has supported reaching out to folks in practice settings and will offer a symposium, for which Kimport has organized a session. She noted it is important to learn about graduate student needs in uncertain and complicated job market. Publications Committee & Eliot Freidson Outstanding Publication Award: Claire Decoteau not present. 2019 Leo G. Reeder Award: Per protocol, Perry did not disclose winner until after the meeting so the focus could remain on the 2018 awardee, Paul Cleary. Perry noted that the committee’s process went well. Carpiano asked if the nomination process is unduly swayed by those with a considerable grad student posse and if so, if there is a way to protect against that. Perry noted that there were four eligible candidates for the 2019 award, and only one nomination is required to be considered. She noted that she was open to changing the nomination process, but would instead focus on drumming up more nominations to insure that there is a broad pool of candidates. McLeod pointed out that nominations by committee members has sometimes been perceived as a conflict of interest, but Jen- nan noted that the Sex & Gender section makes nominations an explicit part of the committee’s charge. Kimport suggested it would be good to be intentional, perhaps working from the list of members. Members also discussed whether self-nominations should be promoted. Carpiano asked if we might make the nomination process less intensive; Reczek echoed this point regarding the impression that the letter was too much work and that there is a considerable emphasis on the candidate’s legacy on graduate students. London noted that medical sociologists who would be worthy candidates may also be primarily undergraduate teachers. Carr said that the nominations letter generates useful quotes. Perry suggested that next year’s committee make a list of the cohort who might be considered for nominations, a list that is broad and inclusive, and provide more lead time for nominations. Leyser-Whelan pointed out that diversity is an important consideration in the process, and that a list could improve representation among nominees if done well. London suggested that the call for nominations be sent to department heads with faculty members on this list. Perry agreed that the full list should go to department heads. Student representatives report: Bandini reported that about 20 students participated in the 2017 event with the Reeder winner. Vasquez Guzman shared that about the same number of people have RSVPed for the happy hour with Paul Cleary and that they are happy about the new format; happy hour format has advantage of promoting interaction.
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Chair-Elect report/ plans for 2019 meeting: Perry expects at least five sessions and hopes for six if membership numbers allow. Some of these sessions are already set, Perry plans to have one session on the theme of health equity and social justice. That would leave just one open session for 2019; she welcomes suggestions. Roberta Simmons Award: Hui “Cathy” Liu noted that due to the lack of specific written criteria led the committee to emphasize how the work was related to medical sociology as an important guide. The committee process worked well, and the committee identified a winner and an honorable mention. Donald W. Light Award for Applied or Public Practice of Medical Sociology: Deb Umberson not present. Howard B. Kaplan Memorial Award and Louise Johnson Scholar: Carpiano noted that the Kaplan award committee sought to insure the awardee fit the essence of Kaplan’s legacy. He also noted that committee member Bessett would present this and the Johnson award due to a schedule conflict. Raffle report: Rubin notes that the configuration of the section events this year has posed some challenges for ticket sales. The raffle was not online this year, but Rubin intends to explore additional possibilities for online advance sales in the future. One could pay venmo or other method. Rubin also noted that this year’s raffle offers great titles, which will be auctioned off at the business meeting. Newsletter Editor’s report: Michalec expressed thanks to all of the contributors and to Roberts for taking over this important task. He asked Council members to continue to respond to newsletter timelines in a timely way to aid Roberts. McLeod offered appreciation to the outgoing newsletter editors Bell and Michalec, and the Council applauded their work over the past five years. Webmasters’ report: Simon Geletta not present. JHSB report: Carpiano thanked all the reviewers, including those present. The editors created a reviewer appreciation award, which reflects depth, quality, and timeliness of reviews. JHSB has published more international work and more qualitative research. They will rotate off and are looking for successors. Schedule of Section activities: McLeod reviewed the remaining section activities. Other Business: Endowment funds update and plans: Bessett noted that the section will make a push to increase the endowment (award) funds. Perry will take the lead on this activity with support from Council. Recommending new sponsors for future ASA receptions: Bessett noted that the section was able to secure a second sponsor for the 2018 meeting and invited Council to brainstorm new sponsors for future receptions, since they will be in very expensive areas of the country (2019 NYC, 2020 San Francisco). Further, Council recommends that the section cease bar
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activity and work to promote more quiet during the sponsors’ remarks in order to insure they are heard. Timing of minutes approval: McLeod suggested that minutes be circulated by email to the Council for approval earlier than at the following year’s meeting. This will help everyone to more accurately recall the meeting for approval and also provide guidance to committees. Award committees may also wish to circulate any tweaks to wording before nominations are due. McLeod agreed to add new council members to the google drive soon after the meeting; it was suggested that they might be added before the meeting in the future. McLeod moved to adjourn the meeting; Rubin seconded the motion. All in favor; the meeting adjourned at 8:15am.
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2018 COUNCIL REPORTS CHAIR’S REPORT – Jane McLeod
As specified in the Medical Sociology Section By-Laws and the Functions and Activities of Council Members (2008), I completed the following in my capacity as the Chair of the Medical Sociology Section, 2017-18: Monitored the Section membership throughout the year. We are currently below our goal of 1000 members. As of July 6, 2018 we have 932 members (677 Regular/255 students). This is below our membership numbers at this time last year but consistent with the declines in membership for most ASA sections. Submitted “Notes from the Chair” to Medical Sociology Newsletter for four issues. Served as liaison with Section Council Committee chairs. Served as liaison with section website and listserv. Worked with ASA Director of Finance (Les Briggs) and Medical Sociology Secretary- Treasurer (Danielle Bessett) to review investment structure for the Donald Light Award for Applied or Public Practice of Medical Sociology and for other section accounts. Submitted bylaws amendment to ASA Council on Sections for inclusion on the 2018 election ballot. Identified and secured Council approval of new newsletter editor. Migrated documents for the Medical Sociology Section’s Manual of Operation (MOO) from the Dropbox folder to the section Google drive. Established documents to record award nominations and requested entries from awards committee chairs. Announced the winner of the 2018 Leo G. Reeder Award and arranged for newsletter column and awards ceremony introduction. Planned and organized the 2018 Awards dinner at Distrito. Planned section reception for the 2018 ASA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. Planned Section sessions for the 2018 ASA meeting (organizers and submission numbers in parentheses) Race, Racism, and Health: Patterns and Processes (Tyson Brown; 7 primary, 25 secondary) The Politics of Health (Celeste Campos-Castillo;13 primary, 9 secondary) Sociology of Medical Education (Sharon Preves; 11 primary) Sociological Research and the Reduction of Health Inequalities (Sirry Alang; 10 primary, 22 secondary) Health, Health Care, and New Technologies (Denise Anthony; 9 primary, 10 secondary) Roundtables (Matt Grace, 81 submissions) Worked with section members to organize and publicize tour of National Board of Medical Examiners (Monica Cuddy) and special session on applied medical sociology (Katrina Kimport) Monitored number of paper submissions to 2018 Section sessions to inform planning of the 2019 meeting. Numbers listed above.
Submitted respectfully, Jane McLeod, Chair 2017-2018, Section on Medical Sociology
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SECRETARY-TREASURER’S REPORT – Danielle Bessett
Secretary’s Report
Minutes from the 2017 Annual Section Council and Business meetings have been submitted to the Council for review and approval.
Please confirm the accuracy of your updated contact information on the Council Member list appended to this report.
Treasurer’s Report
The Section financial reports from ASA for calendar year 2017 and period ending June 30, 2018 are attached as appendices. The ASA has changed their financial reporting format, and all reports now reflect a calendar year budget. The Section remains financially healthy.
The section’s income is generated by two sources: (1) The section’s ability to maintain a high membership count that provides dues income and an allocation from ASA. (2) The ability to secure funding from outside sources to offset expenses. Support for the 2018 reception includes funds from Wiley-Blackwell ($2000) and the Society of Family Planning/SFP Research Fund ($500). Per my predecessor’s suggestion, we sought additional sources of support for this year’s reception; we have allotted time for Council discussion of other sources under Other Business.
The bulk of the section’s expenses derive from annual meeting costs for the reception (which are highly variable depending on the location of the annual meeting) and awards. Another relatively significant expense is support for the US-UK Medical Sociology conference (~$2400 every 2-4 years). Beginning with the 2016 budget, we have been budgeting for the US-UK meeting on an annual basis even though the cost is not incurred annually. Consistent with this practice, the proposed budget for 2018 has a line item of $600. The amount of future support for the next conference will be determined by the number of years elapsed since the previous conference (June 2015, Iceland), multiplied by $600.
In recent years we have managed costs by: (1) reducing reception costs down by holding a joint reception with the Mental Health section (splitting costs 2/3 Medical and 1/3 Mental Health); (2) having no refreshments at the Council meeting; (3) eliminating the travel money that has been occasionally and inconsistently offered to Reeder Award winners in the past; (4) seeking a moderately priced location for the Award dinner; and (5) finding a lower cost vendor for award plaques. At the same time, we have maintained our support of the graduate student lunch/happy hour with the Reeder Award recipient to $400 to accommodate larger groups.
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NOTES ON 2017 ACCOUNT ACTIVITY: A. Over the 2017 calendar year, income for the Medical Sociology general fund was $2,477 more than general expenses. a. This balance is includes the previously unused Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Wiley Blackwell contributions that were made towards the Section’s 2016 reception and rolled over to the 2017 and 2018 receptions, respectively. B. 2017 award expenses, as in earlier years, were handled as follows: a. Expenses for the Reeder and Freidson Awards (plaques and meals) were taken from the Section’s general operating budget rather than drawing on the interest-bearing restricted accounts for these expenditures. Travel expenses for the Kaplan, Johnson, and Simmons Awards were taken from their respective funds, but expenses for the dinner and plaque were taken from the Section’s general budget. b. Expenses for the Light Award (plaque, meal) were taken from the Light Fund that is invested separately and managed by Don Light. c. Funds generated from the Business Meeting book raffle were deposited into the Simmons Fund. C. Restricted Accounts Balances: Names, fund numbers and balances (as of Dec 31, 2017) from restricted accounts are reported by ASA as follows: a. Simmons (79/80): $ 9,578 b. Johnson (72): $26,205 c. Reeder (83): $12,804 d. Kaplan (84): $ 8,226 e. Light (78): $9,052 f. General Section (003): $27,749
ITEMS FOR COUNCIL DISCUSSION AND FOLLOW-UP: 1. Typically, the Book Raffle proceeds are deposited into the restricted account with the lowest balance. Last year’s proceeds were deposited to the Simmons Award fund. This year, the Kaplan fund has the lowest balance so future Book Raffle proceeds should be deposited into that account.
2. Section Chair Jane McLeod and I explored with the ASA Don Light’s offer to place the endowed/restricted accounts listed above into investment accounts that actually earns some income, versus the very low-yield funds that they were in previously under ASA’s management. Don has done this with his Light endowment, and the income earned has greatly exceeded the award expenses. Les Briggs at ASA informed us that the ASA has changed its overall investment strategy in an effort to gain more income for restricted funds. He discouraged us from moving our funds from the main ASA fund and suggested that such a change would not be approved by ASA Council. This represents a difference from our previous understanding, which was that the Section has the authority to manage the endowment (unless terms have been stipulated otherwise, which to our knowledge of our endowments, they have not). For this reason, we do not see a path forward to move restricted funds from the main ASA fund at this time.
a. Between December 31, 2017- March 31, 2018, all of the restricted funds show investment losses. This should be tracked over time to insure that the new ASA strategy is a benefit to the section.
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b. Les indicated that he would like to see the Light award funds moved to the main ASA Fund, but that such a move would be predicated on Don Light’s agreement. At this time, Don prefers to keep his award funds in the current Merrill Lynch account. (See Appendix: Light Award Finances.)
3. We requested governance documents from the ASA regarding our endowed funds. Unfortunately, they have little information on file that is not already described on the awards website: http://www.asanet.org/asa-communities/sections/sites/medical-sociology/awards. Les Briggs advises us to seek information from those in the section who may have knowledge of the awards creation and: “In absence of documentation further detailing the awards, I would think the section would use its best judgement about whether planned uses are in keeping with the original intentions of the funds based on the information that is available.”
a. Information on the Reeder Award provided by Les Briggs not already online: “Leo G. Reeder was a Professor of Public Health at UCLA from 1958 until his untimely demise in 1978. He was a founding member of the Medical Sociology Section and was chair-elect of the section at the time of his death. He died on September 25, 1978 when PSA Flight 182, a 727-jet on which he was a passenger, collided with a small private plane in the skies over San Diego, killing a total of 144 people. “In August 1995, the Section on Medical Sociology voted to transfer $8,000 from its restricted account to establish this new interest-bearing account to support this award. “[I also saw something indicating that funds may also be used to cover expenses associated with the award (recipient’s travel; plaque).]” Note: At least as early as 2015, the section has not offered to support Reeder awardee travel expenses.
b. Information on the Louise Johnson Memorial Fund provided by Les Briggs that is different than what is online: “The Scholar receives travel funds up to $350 to present at the annual ASA.” Website currently specifies coverage of $500 in travel expenses; I have not yet been able to ascertain when this change happened.
c. My predecessor requested that 2017 travel funds for the Johnson and Simmons Awards be taken from the General Funds, but ASA staff determined that they should be drawn from the respective award funds, apparently without consultation with the section. (See 2017 Account Activity, B(a), p.18.) It was decided not to request that the funds be transferred, but this action may inform Council discussion about the accounts from which award funds are drawn.
4. The Section should consider soliciting additional sponsors for future meetings, particularly in 2019 when the ASA returns to New York City where reception costs are significantly higher than average.
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2018 BUDGET, PROPOSED AND ACTUAL: The budget for the Medical Sociology Section (03) for 2018 with proposed and actuals (as of 6/30/18) is attached. 1. The attached budget shows that the section has overspent by a greater amount in 2017 than is accurate. a. We expect additional dues income in the second half of 2018, not currently shown on calendar year format. b. Sociology of Health & Illness/Wiley donation was erroneously included on the section’s proposed budget approved by Council in 2017. Because it was rolled over from the 2016 reception, it is already included in the general fund balance and not shown as income this year. (Sociology of Health & Illness/Wiley were acknowledged in the pocket guide as co-sponsors of the 2018 reception.) 2. Awards dinner expenses were higher than usual. a. $50 was an insufficient estimate for dining costs in Philadelphia. Despite section chair Jane McLeod’s heroic efforts, the lowest per person dinner cost was $54 (likely closer to $65). b. The proposed budget did not account for two section positions (book raffle chair, listserv manager) that are currently occupied by students, thus those dinner costs are billed to the section rather than the individuals.
2019 PROJECTED BUDGET: The draft budget for the Medical Sociology Section (03) for 2019 is attached. Information from the most recent full calendar year was used as a guide, adjusting dinner prices slightly to reflect potential NYC-related increased costs.
I look forward to working with Miranda Waggoner, Secretary-Treasurer Elect, over the next year to insure a smooth transition.
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Tentatively Reconciled Budget 2018 Medical Sociology Section (03)
REVENUES PROPOSED ACTUAL (as of 6/30/18) Section Budget Allocation $3,050 $3,040 Dues Income $3,020 $1,571 Other Income (SHI*, SFP) $- $500
TOTAL REVENUES $6,070 $5,111
EXPENSES Annual Meeting Reception $4,900 $4,900§
Awards Simmons Award ($750 + dinner**) $800 $815§ Freidson Award (dinner) $100 $65§ Reeder Award (dinner) $50 $65§ Kaplan Award*** (dinner) $50 $65§ Johnson Scholar ($500 + dinner) $550 $565§ Light Award† $0 $0 Plaques (6‡) & shipping $500 $333.30
Other Section Activities Student Council Member Travel (2) $500 $500§ Student Council Member dinners (1 of 2) $100 $65§ Incoming Student Council member dinner $50 $65§ Additional student (book raffle chair; listserv) $- $130§ dinners (2) Student Lunch/Happy Hour $400 $350§ US-UK Conference (TBD) $600 $600
TOTAL EXPENSES $8,600 $8575.50
INCREASE (DECREASE) IN NET ASSETS ($2,530) ($3,464.50)
* Sociology of Health & Illness/Wiley donation was erroneously included on proposed budget approved 2017 (suspended this year in 2016 rollover and already included in account balance). ** Dinner estimated at $50pp; likely expenditure closer to $65pp *** Kaplan Award amount of $500 drawn from Kaplan endowed account † All Light Award expenses (incl dinner and plaque) to be drawn from Light endowed account. ‡ Number of plaques to be paid by Section includes 2 possible Freidson winners but no Light winner (see above note). § These amounts require confirmation after expenses are fully registered on ASA statements.
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Draft Budget 2019 Medical Sociology Section (03)
REVENUES PROPOSED Section Budget Allocation $3,040 Dues Income (estimated 950 members) $3,020 Other Income (SHI, SFP) $2,500
TOTAL REVENUES $8,560
EXPENSES Annual Meeting Reception $4,900
Awards Simmons Award ($750 + dinner*) $820 Freidson Award (dinner x 2) $140 Reeder Award (dinner) $70 Kaplan Award** (dinner) $70 Johnson Scholar ($500 + dinner) $570 Light Award† $0 Plaques (6‡) & shipping $500
Other Section Activities Student Council Member Travel (2) $500 Student Council Member dinners (2) $140 Incoming Student Council member dinner $70 Additional student (book raffle chair; $140 listserv) dinners (2) Student Lunch $400 US-UK Conference (TBD) $600
TOTAL EXPENSES $8,920
INCREASE (DECREASE) IN NET ASSETS ($360)
* Dinner is estimated at $70pp due to higher dining costs in NYC. **Kaplan Award amount of $500 drawn from Kaplan endowed account † All Light Award expenses (incl dinner and plaque) to be drawn from Light endowed account. ‡ Number of plaques to be paid by Section includes 2 possible Friedson winners but no Light winner (see above note),
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APPENDIX TO TREASURER’S REPORT: LIGHT AWARD FINANCES – Don Light
This is a report to you and to the Medical Sociology Council on the performance of the Light Fund from January 1 through the end of July 2018. My summary is that the FSIC Light Fund is like the tortoise, steadily moving along as it generates a payout of more than 10 percent, compounded, every month. Since this payout is reinvested in more shares, the base of the Light Fund keeps increasing, from 1269 shares at the beginning of the year to 1334 at the end of June. (Maybe 1365 at the end of July.) This is rather fast tortoise, sort of like me taking a fast walk each day to get some exercise.
Les Briggs sent this summary of the Light Fund from ML (Merrill Lynch):
Donald W. Light Merrill Lynch – FS Investment Corporation (NYSE: FSIC) Summary of YTD June 2018 Performance
Shares Price MV Market Value, 12/31/17 1,269.0696 7.35 9,327.66
1/3/2018 31.3143 7.70 241.12 4/4/2018 33.6150 7.35 247.07
Dividends Received 488.19
Gain / Loss (10.96)
Market Value, 6/30/18 1333.9989 7.35 9,804.89
As you can see, the share price was flat at $7.35. But I explained in my February email report to you that there are good reasons to expect the share price to rise, and in July it rose to $8.10. 1334 shares X $8.10 = $10,805, a gain of $1477 or +15.8%. I think it will rise further.
This contrasts with the hare (actually a three-legged hare) of the main ASA fund, where section endowments for awards have been consolidated. In the great everyone-wins year of 2017, it had a gain 14.3%, while the giant S&P 500 gained 22.6%, a third below the overall market because the ASA investment management team puts a third of the main fund in bonds, which are likely to drag down any fund.
But as in Aesop’s fable, the hare has taken a nap in 2018, or has gotten stuck; so the main ASA fund has gained almost nothing in the first half of 2018, according to Les Briggs. The giant S&P 500 has gained only 0.7 of 1 percent from January through July of 2018. See (http://www.multpl.com/s-p- 500-historical-prices/table/by-month ) This means the Light Fund has increased more than 20 times the 0.7% of the S&P.
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For the rest of the year, the Light Fund will trudge along, compounding at +10 percent a month, and we’ll see what happens to the ASA main fund. It might leap ahead but stock prices are high, and there are headwinds blowing against it.
I recommend keeping the Light Fund as it is in FSIC for another year and enjoy the steady gains. You can see how things look next July 2019. Meantime, ASA will pull $275.74 out to pay for last year’s award expenses and a comparable amount for this year, as it should. The Medical Sociology Council should have the endowments for the other awards pay for their expenses too. That was my original thesis: that endowments for the awards should not just sit there but serve their purpose of paying for the awards they fund. That’s why the donors gave their money, and this will relieve the budget of the Section.
CHAIR-ELECT REPORT/PLANS FOR 2019 MEETING – Brea Perry
The Medical Sociology section will offer six sessions at the 2019 Annual Meeting if membership remains at or above 1,000. At the Council and Business meetings, and through the section listserv, I will solicit suggestions for 2019 session topics. The 2019 Annual Meeting theme is “Engaging social justice for a better world.” In conjunction with the theme, we will offer one session that focuses on social justice. Additionally, we agreed to organize shared sessions with the Sex and Gender section in consecutive years (2018 and 2019). In 2018, the Sex and Gender section used one of their allotted sessions to the shared theme, and in 2019 we will contribute one of ours.
A working draft of sessions is as follows: Roundtables (open submission) Reeder Award/Business Meeting Health equity and social justice (open submission) Gender, health, and medicine (open submission) Two additional open submission sessions will be offered. Possible topics include: The social construction of health and illness Social relationships and health The social organization of health care Medical work, health care professionals, and physician-patient interactions Leveraging biomarkers to understand the social origins of health and illness
STUDENT REPRESENTATIVES REPORT – Julia Bandini and Cirila Estela Vasquez Guzman
In 2017, approximately 20 graduate students had lunch with the Reeder Award recipient, Kathy Charmaz, at the Baton Rouge Steakhouse in Montreal. Students had an opportunity to talk with Prof. Charmaz about her work, ask questions, and share their own experiences as graduate students.
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The 2018 graduate student gathering with the Reeder Award recipient, Paul Cleary, will be a happy hour event on Sunday, August 13 at 2:45pm at Smokin' Betty's in Philadelphia (10 minute walk from the convention center). An announcement has been made through the weekly medical sociology announcements. We have already received multiple confirmations from a diverse range of schools and expect a similar size group for the 2018 ASA Annual Meeting (we are up to 17 students). The medical sociology council student representatives look forward to spending some quality time with Dr. Cleary and other student members of medical sociology.
MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE REPORT – Corinne Reczek
At the time of this report (7/9/18) we are at 932 members, consistent with our number from last year. For context, nearly all section memberships have been down the last two years. In past years, about 5-6 sections including Med Soc have had over 1000 members. However, at the time of this report only Sex and Gender (1064) has reached this benchmark. Moreover, only Med Soc and Soc of Culture (934) have over 900 members. Given these significant drops across the board, Med Soc is maintaining a healthy level of membership.
In order to keep our members over 900, the membership committee has made section and social media announcements on the ongoing membership drive throughout the year, which ended on 7/31/18, by placing announcements and calls for gift memberships on Twitter and in the Med Soc weekly announcements. A key part of membership is gift memberships to incoming and continuing graduate students. ASA has made this relatively easy, but students must be ASA members in order to be gifted a membership. If faculty do not have graduate students needing membership, or wish to be especially generous, we will match faculty with graduate students in need. This announcement was made on social media and in the weekly email. Additionally, as part of continued membership efforts, the committee emailed those individuals who dropped Med Soc this year but remained members of ASA, as well as those individuals who dropped ASA and Med Soc membership this year completely, as a reminder to add Med Soc membership.
Membership counts are found at: http://www.asanet.org/asa-communities/asa-sections/history- asa-sections/section-membership-counts
NOMINATIONS COMMITTEE REPORT – Andrew London
The nominations committee consisted of Andrew London (chair), Jen’nan Read (chair-elect), Reanne Frank, Adam Lippert, and Lindsay Stevens. We solicited nominations during the 2017 Annual Meeting, and subsequently via the section listserve and through one-on-one invitations. We received a large number of nominations in response to the listserve announcement and the one-on- one solicitations. We also used the list of unused nominees from the previous year. From this list the committee created ranked lists of candidates for each position. As was the case in other years, we found that there were some refusals as we moved through candidates, especially for the more labor- intense positions. We were able to recruit a full slate in about a month, although it required sustained effort and a lot of e-mail outreach and personalized communication. Getting started early is recommended. Once the election results were communicated by ASA, the Chair of the Nominations Committee contacted those who were elected and those who were not to communicate the
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outcomes. The list of remaining nominees has been retained for future cycles. The committee appreciates everyone who provided nominations and especially those who ran. As Chair, I would like to acknowledge the efforts of the committee. I am grateful for their engaged participation; they did a great job.
The final election results were as follows: Deborah Carr, Chair-Elect (1-year term, followed by Chair) Miranda Waggoner, Secretary/Treasurer (3-year term, first year as Secretary/Treasurer Elect) Shannon Monnat, Health Policy and Research Committee Chair (2-year term) Jennifer Karas Montez, Nominations Committee Chair-Elect (1-year term, followed by Nominations Committee Chair) Robyn Brown, Membership Chair (2-year term) Patricia Rieker, Council Member (2-year term) Tania Jenkins, Nominations Committee (1-year term) Courtney Boen, Nominations Committee (1-year term) Aalap Bommaraju, Council Member, Student Member (2-year term) Lauren Olsen, Nominations Committee, Student Member (1-year term)
Bylaws Amendment: Passed
TEACHING AND LEARNING COMMITTEE REPORT - Ophra Leyser-Whalen
Dr. Ophra Leyser-Whalen and Dr. Adelle Monteblanco have been co-writing teaching columns for the newsletter (4 to date). These columns are based on the theme of the newsletter and having a concentration on Course-related Undergraduate Research Experiences. They have agreed to continue writing teaching columns for the upcoming year and have already been in communication with Evan Roberts, the new editor. They welcome any additional suggestions for the teaching column.
HEALTH POLICY & RESEARCH COMMITTEE REPORT – Tom Mackie
In my second and final year as chair of the health policy committee, the committee focused efforts on engaging our membership to increase the influence of their expertise and research in health policy. The Health Policy and Research Committee is co-sponsoring a Policy Engagement Preconference, provided by the Scholars Strategy Network, on Friday (August 10th). The Workshop, entitled Training Researchers to Inform Policy (TRIP), aims to provide researchers with the skills and strategies to navigate the research process.
Relatedly, the columns from this subcommittee focused generally on topics concerning how to influence health policy during these tumultuous times. The columns followed the format recommended by newsletter editors of a 250-300 word reflection on an online resource or datasets.
In brief, the four entries included the following content:
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1. The first column of the Medical Sociology Newsletter provided the membership with resources for how to use social media to disseminate research findings. Three resources were shared to assist the membership in learning how to facilitate translation of our empirical evidence into actionable and visible avenues through social media; resources provided included tools available from Canadian Collaborating Centres for Public Health, the Dissemination ad Translation Institute at Academy Health, and the Research Information Network. 2. In the winter newsletter, the column took up the topic of the special issue, gun violence and public health. Collaborating with a colleague (Dr. Bernadette Hohl), this newsletter highlighted data resources to investigate questions around gun violence, including the National Violent Death Reporting System and the Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (both sponsored by the Center for Disease Control). The column also highlighted the resources available from the Society for the Advancement of Violence and Injury Research (SAVIR) and curriculum available around gun-related violence through the World Health Organization and Safe States Initiatives. 3. In the spring newsletter, the column was co-authored with Avi Green, the Executive Director of the Scholars Strategy Network. This column sought to assist membership in how “to get research used by policymakers.” The column provided three tips drawing on the extensive experiences of the Scholars Strategy Network in building skills and strategies for researchers to influence policymakers. This column also highlighted the opportunity for membership to attend the Preconference being hosted by the Scholar Strategy Network and co-sponsored by this Committee. 4. In the final newsletter column, the column sought to integrate prior columns and provide an overview of the ways to increase our social impact as sociologists. Suggestions, based on the peer- reviewed literature, and resources were provided to assist medical sociologists in extending the social impact of the research that we conduct.
I very much appreciated the opportunity to serve as Committee Chair over the past two years. I look forward to being of assistance in the transition of leadership for this committee.
CAREER AND EMPLOYMENT COMMITTEE REPORT – Katrina Kimport
As the chair of the career and employment committee, I wrote four newsletter columns, one per quarterly section newsletter. The columns followed the format recommended by the newsletter editors, running about 250-300 words in length, featuring an online resource, and connecting to the newsletter theme, if possible. For the fall newsletter, I wrote about the classic sociological insight of the strength of weak ties in job seeking. For the winter issue, I wrote about the relationship—and distinctions—between public health and medical sociology, recognizing that not only are public health job openings potentially good fits for medical sociologists, but also that medical sociologists may find themselves in interdisciplinary collaborations with public health scientists. For the spring’s theme of art, I featured a news article on the work of a grad student who depicted the ups and downs of grad school through scenes made out of Legos. This column aimed to recognize the structural challenges of the academy and, hopefully, remind us all to have empathy for ourselves and others as we navigate academia. Finally, for the summer newsletter, I highlighted the Sociology in Practice Settings Symposium that will take place Sunday, Aug 12 as part of ASA’s annual meetings.
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The symposium can offer opportunities for sociologists working outside the academy as well as those considering doing so to network and build community.
Additionally, in my capacity as career and employment committee chair, I organized a session for the aforementioned Symposium on “Practicing Sociology in Biomedical Settings.” The panelists will talk about their experience as sociologists working in interdisciplinary settings, including in government, non-profits, and multidisciplinary research settings. As the symposium aims to reach a broad audience, the presentations will be appropriate for a broad audience. Nonetheless, the emphasis on biomedical settings will make it of particular potential interest to section members. I’ve greatly enjoyed this first year in the position and thank the section members and elected officers for their support and engagement!
PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE & FREIDSON AWARD REPORT – Claire Decoteau
As Chair of the Publications Committee, I am happy to announce that we gave the 2018 Eliot Freidson Award to:
McDonnell, Terence E. 2016. Best Laid Plans: Cultural Entropy and the Unraveling of AIDS Media Campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
We did not award an honorable mention as there was no clear contender despite the fact that the committee was extremely impressed with the quality of the submissions.
Our committee’s process: I would like to thank Daniel Menchik, Brea Perry and Owen Whooley for their service to the section by serving on this time-intensive committee. A total of 21 books were nominated. Each book was initially read by two committee members, who ranked their top 2-4 books. This included 8 total books, which were then read by all of the committee members in order to arrive at the winner.
REEDER AWARD PROCESS REPORT – Brea Perry
Paul Cleary was awarded the 2018 Leo G. Reeder Award. A winner has been determined for the 2019 Leo G. Reeder Award. As is our custom, the 2019 winner will not be announced until the 2018 Annual Meeting comes to an end.
There were 4 eligible nominees for the 2019 Reeder Award. I posted the letters of nomination and current CV’s of the nominees on Dropbox. The voting council members reviewed all materials and sent initial rankings to me which I organized using the Council’s ranking system. Although we had planned on a phone conference to discuss the rankings, a clear winner emerged from the voting and a conference was not necessary. I will contact the 2019 winner and his/her nominator(s) after the meetings in Philadelphia. The results will be announced in the Fall newsletter. The deadline for nominations for the 2020 Leo G. Reeder Award is April 1, 2019. Nominations will be sent to the Chair-Elect. Nominees from previous years remain eligible for five years. After five
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years, candidates can be re-nominated. The nominators of “expired” candidates are asked if they wish to re-nominate their candidate by the Chair-Elect.
As a matter of record, the Reeder Award call for nominees was as follows: The Medical Sociology Section invites nominations for the 2019 Leo G. Reeder Award to be awarded at the annual meeting of the Medical Sociology Section in New York. This award is given annually for Distinguished Contribution to Medical Sociology. This award recognizes scholarly contributions, especially a body of work displaying an extended trajectory of productivity that has contributed to theory and research in medical sociology. The Reeder Award also acknowledges teaching, mentoring, and training as well as service to the medical sociology community broadly defined. Please submit a letter of nomination and the nominee’s curriculum vitae to Brea Perry at [email protected] with the subject line: 2019 Reeder Award Nomination. Nominations are due by April 1, 2018. The nominee and at least one nominator must be current section members. Note: If a person nominated for the Reeder Award is currently a member of the Medical Sociology Section Council, the nomination will be deferred until the person is no longer on the Council.
SIMMONS AWARD REPORT – Hui Liu
Committee: Richard Carpiano, Tania M. Jenkins, Hui Liu (Chair), Jane McLeod, & David Warner The Simmons Award received 8 nominations this year. After thorough review of each submission, the award committee selected the dissertation, “According to Plan?: Medicine, Culture, and Reproductive Planning in the United States” by Lindsay Stevens as the winner of the 2018 Simmons Award. This dissertation advances our understanding of the “planned pregnancy” as a contemporary medical and social phenomenon and makes an important contribution to medical sociology, inequalities, gender, and race and ethnicity. It uses an intersectional lens to understand how inequality is produced by and embedded in interrelated arenas: medicine and health policy, the environment, embodiment, and science, knowledge and technology. Stevens masterfully analyzed multiple sources of data to examine the inequality at multiple levels of the processes surrounding pregnancy planning. Specifically, she documents how the concept of “pregnancy planning” often gets deployed in ways that value the reproduction of privileged women, devalue that of marginalized women, and perpetuate existing inequalities. Her analytic methods range from content analysis, ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews. Her example paper derived from this dissertation is published in Social Science & Medicine. The paper is clearly written, well integrated with previous literature and theories. The committee believes that this innovative dissertation makes important theoretical and methodological contributions to medical sociology and will have a high impact on the field. The committee also decided to give an honorable mention to Matthew K. Grace’s dissertation, titled “Fractures in the Medical Education Pipeline: The Social Determinants of Program Attrition among Early Career Premedical Students”, given its high-quality work and potential contributions to medical sociology.
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LIGHT AWARD REPORT – Debra Umberson
The 2018 recipient of the ASA Medical Sociology Section's 2018 Donald W. Light Award for Applied Medical Sociology is Jennifer Reich (U Colorado, Denver) for Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines. NYU Press 2016.
This book was nominated by Laura Carpenter, Vanderbilt University.
Committee members were unanimous in choosing Reich’s book for this award. Four books were submitted this year and our choice for the award is first rate. However, to increase the number of book submissions in the future, the committee chair should consider ways of advertising the award beyond the ASA listserv. In addition, the description of the award might need some elaboration.
Award committee members included: Debra Umberson Eric Wright Helen B. Marrow Tom Mackie Cirila Estela Vasquez Guzman
KAPLAN MEMORIAL AWARD REPORT – Richard Carpiano
The 2018 Howard Kaplan Awards Committee was composed of Richard Carpiano (Council Member-at-large, Chair) and Danielle Bessett (Treasurer).
We had four applicants for the Kaplan Award. For the Howard Kaplan Award, the committee selected Wallis Adams (Northeastern University) 2018 recipient. Wallis will be presenting her paper “Pockets of People: Forensic Peer Support in Pennsylvania” at this year’s Sociology of Mental Health roundtables. She will be present in Philadelphia to receive her award at the Section Business Meeting.
JOHNSON SCHOLAR REPORT – Richard Carpiano
The 2018 Howard Kaplan and Louise Johnson Awards Committee was composed of Richard Carpiano (Council Member-at-large, Chair) and Danielle Bessett (Treasurer).
We have 7 applicants for the Johnson Award. For the Louise Johnson Award, the committee selected Lauren Olsen (University of California, San Diego) who will be presenting her paper “Emotionally Taxing and Unpaid: The Costs of Racial Instruction in U.S. Medical Schools” at the Medical Sociology Section Session “Sociology of Medical Education.” She will be present in Philadelphia to receive her award at the Section Business Meeting.
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NEWSLETTER REPORT – Ann V. Bell and Barret Michalec
Production: Since the last annual meeting, four issues of the Medical Sociology Newsletter (MSN) were published. These issues represented Volume 54, Issues 1-4. Our goals, as the editors of the MSN, have been to: a.) make the MSN more concise through streamlining articles/contributions, b.) develop a “focus topic” for each issue, c.) have articles/contributions oriented to the “focus topic”, and d.) increase the exposure of medical sociologists and offer practical advice through the “Guest Columnist” and “Interview with a Scholar” pieces as well as promotion of the twitter and Facebook page of the section. Each of these goals were reached, and we believe we continue to offer an enriching and engaging newsletter.
The following are the “Focus Topics”, “Guest Columnist”, and individual featured in the “Interview with a Scholar” for each issue in Volume 54 of the MSN:
Fall 2017: Topic: Chronic Illness Guest Columnist: Bie Nio Ong Interview with a Scholar: Kathy Charmaz (Reeder Award Winner)
Winter 2018: Topic: Gun Violence as Public Health Issue Guest Columnist: David Yamane Interview with a Scholar: Sandro Galea
Spring 2018: Topic: Art in Health & Medicine Guest Columnist: Shelley Wall Interview with a Scholar: Ian Williams
Summer 2018: Topic: “Free-for-all” Interview with a Scholar: Ann Bell & Barret Michalec
Layout and Content: We kept with the general layout of previous volumes of the MSN. The “Career & Employment” column (written by Chair of the Career and Employment Committee), the “Teaching Tips” column (written by the Chair of the Teaching Committee), and the “Health Policy” column (written by the Chair of the Health Policy & Research Committee) were all included in each issue. Additionally, the student editor included a “Student News & Views” column in each issue of the newsletter, as well as a “Getting Connected" column by the webmasters. The remaining space of each issue was allocated to Section features, programming for the annual meeting, traditional news items, announcements, and solicitations. We are grateful to all authors for their outstanding contributions. We feel that each author continues to work with us, offering fantastic informative pieces for each issue.
Production and Electronic Availability: The Section continued to support the policy that only electronic versions of the MSN be available to members. PDF files were sent electronically to the webmasters Simon Geletta and Mel Jeske (our many thanks for their continued excellent work) and
29 they were kind enough to post them on the Medical Sociology Section website. Once the newsletter was posted on the website, its availability was announced on the MEDSOC listserv, as well as the Section Announcements listserv. We are also grateful to Lilla Pivnick for posting the newsletters to the Section Announcements listserv.
Student Newsletter Editors: Alaz Kilicaslan from Boston University was chosen as the Student Editor for 2017-2018. We appreciate his thoughtful contributions to the Student News & Views column this past year, and his professionalism in constructing the questions for and conducting the interviews with a variety of medical sociologists for the “Interview with a Scholar” column. We are currently looking for a new Student Editor for 2018-2019. We will advertise in the MSN and on the section listservs and will also solicit applications at the ASA meetings.
Expenses: The four issues of Volume 54 were completed without any cost to the Section. This was an excellent fourth and final year as Co-Editors, and all success is due to the terrific support of section members. We look forward to handing over the editorship to Evan Roberts of the University of Minnesota and seeing all that he will do with the publication.
BOOK RAFFLE REPORT – Sara Rubin
Last year’s book raffle raised a record $500 for the Roberta G. Simmons Award. A total of 32 books were received from 17 individuals and publishers. These contributors were recognized in two ways: at the Business Meeting, where their books were displayed, and in the Fall 2017 Medical Sociology Newsletter, in which an article was included that recognized their contributions. From 2009 to 2017, individuals and publishers have donated 336 books that have resulted in a total of $3870 for the Simmons Award.
In summer 2018, the current contributors were thanked personally for their 2017 donation in an email and, at the same time, they were asked to contribute again to this years’ raffle (a copy of the Newsletter article recognizing their contributions was included). Past contributors from previous years were also sent an email asking them if they would like to make a donation in 2018. A solicitation was sent via the MEDSOC listserv in June 2018. A request for donations was also placed in the Summer 2018 Medical Sociology Newsletter. As of July 15, these efforts have resulted in 33 new books, donated by 13 individuals and publishers. The deadline for donations is July 31. The books will be brought to the section’s roundtables and business meeting, where they will be displayed and raffled off. Ticket prices are $5.00 each, and each winning ticket will entitle the recipient to one book. Winners will be allowed to choose their book immediately and take them home. As in the past, tickets will be sold to the Reception, Awards Dinner, Council Meeting and Business Meeting, and Reeder Lecture.
Additionally, for the first time this year, raffle tickets will be sold online ahead of the conference, and will be available to purchase onsite using a credit card or payment app, such as PayPal, Venmo, or the Cash App.
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WEBSITE REPORT – Simon Geletta
Members should be aware of the new “members update” page. This page is created to have a place on the web, where members will update each-other about what they are doing in terms of significant development in their teaching, scholarly work and/or service projects. Such updates may foster collaboration… It might also be a way of announcing things like publication, tenure, promotion, and other such professional and/or personal milestones.
JHSB EDITORS REPORT -- Richard Carpiano and Brian C. Kelly
NB: This report is posted on the ASA website: http://www.asanet.org/research-and- publications/journal-resources/annual-editors-reports#JHSB
Journal of Health and Social Behavior has a long-standing reputation as an outlet for cutting edge research on the social dimensions of health and illness. Reflecting JHSB’s mission statement, our articles not only apply sociological theories and methods towards elucidating a wide array of health issues, but also use health issues to inform our broader understanding of many sociological topics, including inequalities, identities, social ties, and organizations. In 2017, our papers reflected this focus, with many papers touching on issues of social inequalities, employing multiple levels of analysis, and adopting a life course perspective. All studies sought not only to employ theory, but to expand it. The articles employed a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methods to study the social origins of health in the United States and other countries.
Journal Operations In 2017, JHSB completed its first full year under our new editorship. A key focus of the first year of our editorial term was the reduction of the substantial backlog that had accumulated in recent years. Over the past decade, the number of manuscripts submitted to JHSB increased considerably, but the number of papers published annually remained the same. This led to the gradual build-up of a considerable backlog of manuscripts that had been accepted for publication, but were not being published (online or in print) until over a year past that point. The accumulation of this backlog had the potential to snowball into an avalanche during this editorial period. Although we began editorial work during July 2016, the first manuscripts accepted during their term were not published until the December 2017 issue.
Several steps were taken to alleviate the backlog and return the journal to normal operations. First, we requested and received an additional allocation of page space to relieve the backlog. Second, changes were made to the structure of production pacing and copy editing. Third, we also made some difficult decisions on manuscripts submitted during 2017 in order to reduce the backlog, leading to a lower acceptance rate during this year than they would prefer to see. Together, these efforts led to the elimination of the backlog and we have assessed that the journal had returned to normal operations by the end of 2017 and the acceptance rate has returned to the historical average of approximately 9-10 percent seen over the past decade.
The increase in the page allocation has allowed us to publish nine papers per issue in recent issues. This brings the total number of papers per year up to 36, an increase from the average of 30 papers that have been published over the past decade. We are hopeful that the temporary increase in page
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allocations will remain permanent after the 2018 volume. This will account for the increase in submissions in recent years and prevent a future accumulation of a backlog. Indeed, this matter has been identified by prior editors. As noted by previous editor Gilbert Gee: “Our page allocations (i.e. pages given to each issue) remained constant, but the increase in submissions has led to a backlog of articles awaiting publication. Our backlog was about two issues. I recommend that we monitor this backlog. Should it continue to grow, we might entertain the idea of increasing the page allocation.” We agree with this statement and have found the current level of nine articles per issue to be appropriate for the current number of submissions we are receiving.
Despite the work to reduce the manuscript backlog, the journal’s operations ran smoothly in 2017. For a second straight year, the average time from submission to decision declined. The average turnaround time from receipt of submission to first decision was 4.5 weeks, a schedule slightly lower than prior years (5.2 weeks in 2016; 5.9 weeks in 2015).
The production lag time—i.e. time between acceptance of a paper and its appearance in print—rose from 9.1 months in 2016 to 12.5 months in 2017. For articles in the March 2017 issue, timing to print was 14 months but this production lag was down to 8.5 months by the December 2017 issue, an indication of the shift in production due to the efforts to curtail the backlog. Now that we dealt with the backlog by the end of 2017, we anticipate much lower production lag time during 2018.
JHSB received 396 new manuscripts in 2017, an increase from 348 in 2016. This was a return to approximately 400 submissions per year that occurred during Gilbert Gee’s term as editor. The temporary decrease in 2016 might be attributable to the journal’s transition, whereby some authors might have been hesitant to submit during the editorial transition. Of the 396 new submissions, 43.9 percent were invited for peer review, with the remainder desk rejected after initial review by the editors. Among reviewed articles, 12.6 percent were invited for a revise and resubmit and 87.4 percent were rejected after review. In 2017, JHSB published 30 articles, no corrigenda, and 4 policy briefs. Regarding the latter, we select one paper from each issue that has significant policy implications and ask the authors to craft a one-page brief directed at policymakers, media outlets and the general public. The brief is included in the front-end of the issue and on the journal home page and distributed to media outlets and non- profit and governmental organizations across the country. All briefs are open-access.
Deputy Editors, Editorial Board, Peer Reviewers, and Journal Staff The journal’s Deputy Editors (Jason Beckfield, Sarah Burgard, Robert Faris, Hedwig Lee, Bruce Link, Sara Shostak, and Margaret Weden) have played an invaluable role in adjudicating difficult decisions, managing conflict-of-interest submissions, and providing advice on the journal’s operations.
Rotating off the editorial board on December 31, 2017, were the following: Ilana Akresh, William Avison, Terje Eikemo, Tyrone Forman, Bridget Goosby, Steven Haas, Terrence Hill, Allen LeBlanc, Karen Lincoln, Ka-yuet Liu, Jane McLeod, Jill Quadagno, Janet Shim, Karen Lutfey Spencer, David Stuckler, Edna Viruell-Fuentes, Emily Walton, and Anna Zajacova. The editorial board was diverse in terms of gender (58 percent women in 2017; 59 percent in 2016), and race/ethnicity (21 percent minorities in 2017; 25 percent in 2016).
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To create opportunities and facilitate diversity in our editorial board (and reduce potential selection biases based on professional networks), we instituted an open call for nominations to the editorial board. Based upon these nominations, we selected new editorial board members from a wider pool of individuals. Beginning on January 1, 2018, new editorial board members included Tony Brown, Amy Burdette, Wen Fan, Holly Foster, Katherine Frohlich, Elizabeth Gage-Bouchard, Donald Light, Krystale Littlejohn, Tara McKay, Sanyu Mojola, Anna Mueller, Martyn Pickersgill, Jacqueline Torres, Yang Claire Yang, and Hui Zheng.
Additionally, we instituted peer review awards for the 2017 review period. In evaluating candidates for the inaugural peer review awards, we considered several factors, including quality of constructive content (for editors and authors), the number of reviews performed, and punctuality of returned reviews. The following individuals were selected for outstanding contributions via their peer review evaluations during the calendar year of 2017: Matthew Andersson, Bridget Gorman, Adam Lippert, stef shuster, and Mieke Beth Thomeer. These peer review awards were announced in the March 2018 issue.
We thank the outgoing editorial board members, the new and continuing board members, and the many additional ad hoc reviewers who have contributed their time and expertise so generously to the journal. Without their contributions, we simply could not fulfill the goal of publishing the very best papers in medical sociology submitted to the journal.
We have been fortunate to work with such a talented editorial office team. Andrea Polonijo rotated off the position as Managing Editor for Production in September 2017. Ryan Trettevik has capably filled her shoes since then, with Andrea continuing as our copyeditor. In July 2018, Ty Miller will rotate off the Managing Editor for Reviews position to start his job as Assistant Professor of Sociology at Winthrop University. Editorial Assistant Stephanie Wilson will assume this role at that time. Of course, there was all of the hard work and dedication by the editorial board members, reviewers, and authors. It is because of such a broad and supportive community that JHSB continues to thrive. We are grateful to all of these people.
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2018 MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY SECTION BUSINESS MEETING AGENDA Sunday, August 12, 2018 9:30‐10:10am
1. Welcome – Jane McLeod 2. Transitions: Outgoing and incoming Council members – Jane McLeod 3. Review of 2018 Agenda and Report from the Chair – Jane McLeod 4. Approval of 2017 Business Meeting Minutes – Danielle Bessett 5. Secretary/Treasurer Report – Danielle Bessett 6. Committee Reports: a. Membership – Corinne Reczek b. Teaching – Ophra Leyser‐Whalen c. Health Policy & Research – Thomas Mackie d. Publications – Claire Decoteau e. Career and Employment – Katrina Kimport f. Nominations Committee – Andrew London 7. Memorial Announcement from Phil Brown 8. Call for Nominations – Jen’nan Read 9. Book Raffle 10. New Business 11. Chair‐Elect Report / Plans for 2019 Meeting – Brea Perry 12. Adjournment and Passing of the Gavel –Jane McLeod to Brea Perry
*Raffle tickets will be sold during the Reception on August 11, 2018 and Business Meeting on August 12, 2018. Drawing will occur during the Business Meeting.
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Minutes of the 2018 Medical Sociology Section Business Meeting Sunday, August 12, 2018 9:30-10:10am NOTE: Minutes not yet approved by Medical Sociology Council.
Present: Danielle Bessett; Katrina Kimport; Corinne Reczek; Eva Kahana; Lindsay Stevens; Susan Markens; Miranda Waggoner; Stephanie Teixeira-Poit; Donald Light; Ephraim Shapiro; Andrew Burns; Berkeley Franz; Tiffany Joseph; Phil Brown; Tasleem Padamsee; Emily Hammad Mrig; C. Estela Vasquez Guzman; Alexis MacLennan; Karen Van Gundy; Michelle Smirnova; Deborah Carr; David Rien; Jennie Jacobs Kronenfeld; Alexandra Vinson; Eric Van Rite; Alex Brewer; Tania Jenkins; Kelly Underman; Martha Boomer; Stephanie Hall; John Taylor; Teresa Scheid; Martin Wood; Courtney Cuthbertson; Darla Still; Karen Spencer; Matt Grace; Will McConnell; Jennifer Singh; Marianne Neal-Joyce; John Schumacher; Elena Fazio; Kaitlyn Jaffe; Emily Allen Paine; Verna Keith; Eva Kahsue; Ellie Byrne; Ellie Byrne; Jennifer Kara Montez; Karen Staniland; Courtney Boen; Andrew London; Brian Kelly; Brea Perry; Cathy Liu; Robert Dingwall; Hilary Thomas; Alex Kissling; Christine Louis; Bronwen Lichtenstein; Anne Scheer; Evan Roberts; Susan Roxburgh; Sara Rubin; Peter Conrad
Minutes recorded by Danielle Bessett, Secretary/Treasurer
Welcome, Transitions, Review of Agenda, and Report from the Chair: Jane McLeod called the meeting to order at 9:30am. She welcomed attendees and described the transitions in the section leadership, thanking departing members for their service and introduced newly-elected incoming members of Council. Jane reviewed the agenda for the 2018 meeting, alerting attendees to already submitted printed committee reports made available at the meeting.
Jane announced that the conflict of interest amendment to section bylaws passed in the recent AS election. She also noted that the section is enforcing the rule that section award nominators and recipients must be section members and encouraged section members to nominate the great work of our colleagues.
Approval of 2017 Business Meeting Minutes: Danielle Bessett reported that Council had approved the minutes to the 2017 Council meeting, taken by her predecessor Janet Shim. Danielle motioned for approval of the minutes of the 2017 Business meeting (also taken by Shim) by attendees; Don Light seconded in the motion. All were in favor, none opposed or abstained.
Secretary/Treasurer Report: Danielle Bessett summarized the report on the 2017-2018 budget, including actual expenses. She noted that the budgetary reports now reflect a calendar-year budget. She thanked the Sociology of Health and Illness/Wiley Blackwell for their continued sponsorship of the reception and Society of Family Planning/SFP Research Fund as a new contributor to the reception. Council welcomes any additional suggestions section members may have for new sponsors, particularly those in New York City where the meetings will be held next year. She thanked Jane for her work to find a reasonably-priced location for the award dinner, which helps to contain section costs. She noted that, although the ASA has made changes that should allow section award accounts
35 to earn more interest, this yield is not yet realized and the section has been drawing down the award balances. She noted that Council is watching this carefully; Jane McLeod added that the section will initiate a capital campaign to supplement the award accounts.
Membership Committee: Corinne Reczek reported that the section had 964 members as of that time, still under the 1,000 member mark and reflective of trends across the sections. She encouraged members to seek additional members, noting that these efforts come back to the section in dues revenue and sessions.
Teaching Committee: Ophra Leyser-Whalen could not be present. No additional comments in addition to the report.
Health Policy & Research: Thomas Mackie could not be present. No additional comments in addition to the report.
Publications Committee: Claire Decoteau could not be present. No additional comments in addition to the report.
Career and Employment Committee: Katrina Kimport wrote four newsletter columns that appeared in the section newsletter and highlighted the Practice Settings Symposium that took place on the Sunday of the conference. Kimport also organized a session in that symposium that would be of particular interest for medical sociologists, “Practicing Sociology in Biomedical Settings.”
Nominations Committee & Call for Nominations: Andrew London thanked the committee and conveyed the gratitude of the committee to all of those who nominated or ran for section office. The nominations showed the depth of in our field. The election results were as follows: Deborah Carr, Chair-Elect (1-year term, followed by Chair) Miranda Waggoner, Secretary/Treasurer (1-year term as Secretary/Treasurer-Elect, followed by two years as Secretary/Treasurer) Shannon Monnat, Health Policy and Research Committee Chair (2-year term) Jennifer Karas Montez, Nominations Committee Chair-Elect (1-year term, followed by Nominations Committee Chair) Robyn Brown, Membership Chair (2-year term) Patricia Rieker, Council Member (2-year term) Tania Jenkins, Nominations Committee (1-year term) Courtney Boen, Nominations Committee (1-year term) Aalap Bommaraju, Council Member, Student Member (2-year term) Lauren Olsen, Nominations Committee, Student Member (1-year term)
Member Announcement: Phil Brown provided a brief testimonial on the considerable contributions of Garth Williams, who could not participate in the meetings due to terminal illness. He noted that cards, letters, and messages from friends and colleagues would be appreciated.
Call for Nominations: Jen’nan Read could not be present. Opportunities for nominations will be accepted by email to Jen’nan Read.
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Book Raffle: Sara Rubin publicly thanked those who donated books for the book raffle. The book raffle was conducted during the business meeting.
New business: No new business was on the agenda nor initiated from the floor.
Chair-Elect Report/Plans for the 2019 Meeting: Brea Perry gave thanks to Jane and Council for a great meeting. Looking ahead to the 2019, New York promises to be a very expensive site. Perry anticipates a session on health equity and social justice, a co-sponsored session on gender, health, and medicine, in addition to our usual sessions featuring roundtables, the Reeder Award, and business meeting. One or two open submission sessions will be offered, and Perry welcomes suggestions.
Adjournment and Passing of the Gavel: In closing, Jane McLeod reminded the section that September 30 is an important deadline for membership. She welcomed Brea Perry as the new Chair and passed the gavel. Applause from membership.
Danielle Bessett motioned to adjourn the meeting, Brea Perry seconded; all in favor to adjourn.
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Tentatively Reconciled Budget 2018 Medical Sociology Section (03)
REVENUES PROPOSED ACTUAL (as of 10/31/18) Section Budget Allocation $3,050 $3,040 Dues Income $3,020 $2,751 Other Income (SHI*, SFP) $ - $500
TOTAL REVENUES $6,070 $6,291
EXPENSES Annual Meeting Reception $4,900 $5,663.26
Awards Simmons Award ($750 + dinner**) $800 $821.76 Freidson Award (dinner) $100 $71.76 Reeder Award (dinner) $50 $ - Kaplan Award*** (dinner) $50 $71.76 Johnson Scholar ($500 + dinner) $550 $544.31 Light Award† $0 $0 Plaques (6‡) & shipping $500 $333.80
Other Section Activities Student Council Member Travel (2) $500 $500.00 Student Council Member dinners (1 of 2) $100 $71.76 Incoming Student Council member dinner $50 $ - Additional student (book raffle chair; listserv) $ - $143.52 dinners (2) Student Lunch/Happy Hour $400 $251.36 US-UK Conference (TBD) $600 $600.00
TOTAL EXPENSES $8,600 $9,072.79
INCREASE (DECREASE) IN NET ASSETS ($2,530) ($2,781.79)
* Sociology of Health & Illness/Wiley donation was erroneously included on proposed budget approved 2017 (suspended this year in 2016 rollover and $2,000 already included in account balance). ** Dinner estimated at $50pp; expenditure $71.76 per person *** Kaplan Award amount of $500 drawn from Kaplan endowed account † All Light Award expenses (incl dinner and plaque) drawn from Light endowed account. ‡ Number of plaques to be paid by Section includes 2 possible Freidson winners but no Light winner (see above note). Only one Freidson plaque required in 2018.
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2018 MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY SECTION COUNCIL LIST
SECTION OFFICERS:
Jane McLeod Debra Umberson Chair Elect (Chair Elect 2016‐17, Chair 2017‐ Chair (Chair Elect 2015‐16; Chair 2016‐17; 18, Past Chair 2018‐19) Past Chair 2017‐18) Department of Sociology Population Research Center Indiana University University of Texas at Austin [email protected] [email protected]
Brea Perry Danielle Bessett (Chair Elect 2017‐2018, Chair 2018‐19, Past Secretary‐Treasurer (Secretary‐Treasurer Chair 2019‐2020) Elect 2016‐17, Secretary‐Treasurer 2017‐19) Department of Sociology Department of Sociology Indiana University, Bloomington University of Cincinnati [email protected] [email protected]
SECTION COUNCIL:
Richard Carpiano Cirila Estela Vasquez Guzman Council Member‐at‐Large (2016‐18) Student Council Member‐at‐Large (2016‐18) Department of Sociology and School of Public Department of Sociology Policy University of New Mexico University of California, Riverside [email protected] [email protected] Julia Bandini Hui (Cathy) Liu Student Council Member‐at‐Large (2017‐19) Council Member‐At‐Large (2017‐19) Department of Sociology Department of Sociology Brandeis University Michigan State University [email protected] [email protected]
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Nominations Committee:
Andrew London Adam Matthew Lippert Chair (Chair Elect 2016‐17, Chair 2017‐18) Member (2017‐18) Department of Sociology Department of Sociology Syracuse University University of Colorado Denver [email protected] [email protected]
Jen'nan G. Read Lindsay M. Stevens Chair‐Elect (2017‐2018, Chair 2018‐2019) Student Member (2017‐18) Department of Sociology Department of Sociology Duke University Rutgers University [email protected] [email protected]
Reanne Frank Member (2017‐18) Department of Sociology Ohio State University [email protected]
Membership Committee: Publications Committee: Corinne Reczek Claire Laurier Decoteau Chair (2016‐18) Chair (2017‐2019) Department of Sociology Department of Sociology Ohio State University University of Illinois, Chicago [email protected] [email protected]
Teaching Committee: Career & Employment Committee: Ophra Leyser‐Whalen Katrina Kimport Chair (2017‐2019) Chair (2017‐2019) Department of Sociology & Anthropology Advancing New Standards in Reproductive University of Texas at El Paso Health (ANSIRH) [email protected] University of California‐ San Francisco [email protected]
Health Policy & Research Committee: Thomas Mackie Book Raffle: Chair (2016‐18) Sara Rubin Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Department of Sociology Aging University of California‐ San Francisco Rutgers University [email protected] [email protected]
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Newsletter Editors:
Ann Bell (Term ends 2018) University of Delaware Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice [email protected] University of Delaware [email protected] Evan Roberts (Term begins 2018) Department of Sociology Barret Michalec (Term ends 2018) University of Minnesota Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice [email protected]
JHSB Editors:
Richard Carpiano Brian Kelly Department of Sociology Department of Sociology University of California, Riverside Purdue University [email protected] [email protected]
Webmasters:
Simon Geletta Mel Jeske Department of Public Health Department of Sociology Des Moines University University of California, San Francisco [email protected] [email protected]
INCOMING MEMBERS:
Deborah Carr Miranda Waggoner Chair Elect (Chair Elect 2018‐19, Chair 2019‐ Secretary‐Treasurer Elect (Secretary‐ 20, Past Chair 2020‐21) Treasurer Elect 2018‐19, Secretary‐Treasurer Department of Sociology 2019‐21) Boston University Department of Sociology [email protected] Florida State University [email protected]
Aalap Bommaraju Patricia P. Rieker Student Council Member‐at‐Large (2018‐ Council Member At‐Large (2018‐20) 20) Department of Sociology Department of Sociology Boston University University of Cincinnati [email protected] [email protected]
Shannon Monnat Robyn Brown Chair, Health Policy and Research Chair, Membership (2018‐20) Committee (2018‐20) University of Kentucky Department of Sociology [email protected] Syracuse University [email protected]
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Jennifer Karas Montez Chair Elect, Nominations Committee (Chair Elect 2018‐19, Chair 2019‐20) Department of Sociology Syracuse University [email protected]
Courtney Boen Member, Nominations Committee (2017‐18) Department of Sociology University of Pennsylvania [email protected]
Tania Jenkins Member, Nominations Committee (2018‐19) Department of Sociology Temple University [email protected]
Lauren Olsen Student Member, Nominations Committee (2017‐18) Department of Sociology University of California, San Diego [email protected]
MEDICAL SOCI OLOGY SECTION OF THE ASA
Fall 2017
Volume 54, Issue 1 Medical Sociology Newsletter
NOTES FROM THE NEW CHAIR By Jane McLeod [email protected] Inside this issue:
Notes from the New Dear Section Members, 1 Chair Many thanks to everyone who contributed to making the 2017 meeting in Montréal such a success. Deb Umberson assembled an outstanding set of sessions with the able assis- 2017 Section Awards 2-3 tance of organizers Deborah Carr, Tod Hamilton, Hui Liu, Leticia Marteleto, and Patti Thomas. Special thanks to Corinne Reczek and Zhe Zhang for taking on the time- Teaching 4 consuming task of organizing the roundtable session. Kathy Charmaz offered a stimulat- ing, warm-spirited, and inspiring Reeder Award address. The reception was buzzing with Health Policy 4 conversation and energy (a challenge to Danielle Bessett who somehow made the book raffle work under acoustically-challenging circumstances!). As always, the Medical Sociology community is a great Career & Employment 5 place to spend one’s time amidst the hustle and bustle of ASA. My personal thanks to the Council members who completed their terms in 2017: Kristin Barker (past chair), Janet Student News & Views 5 Shim (secretary-treasurer), Tony Brown (council member-at-large), Taylor Hargrove (student council member-at-large), Guest Column: Bie Nio Jason Schnittker (nominations committee chair), Rene Almeling (publications committee chair), Laura Senier 6 Ong (teaching committee chair), and Miranda Waggoner (career and employment committee chair). Deb Umberson (the 2017 chair) and Kristin Barker (the 2017 past-chair) have been especially patient and generous with their time as I Scholar Interview: 7 learn the position of chair. This year, we welcome new Council members: Brea Perry (chair-elect), Hiu Liu (council Reeder Winner member-at-large), Julia Bandini (student council member-at large), Claire Decoteau (publications committee chair), Ophra Leyser-Whalen (teaching committee chair), Katrina Kimport (career and employment committee chair), and 2017 Book Raffle 8 Jen’nan Read (nominations committee chair-elect). Sara Rubin has agreed to take over as Book Raffle Chair. The section could not function without the contributions of all of these people. Get Connected 9 As of the time of this writing, we have not yet reached the 1000-member milestone required to have six sessions at the 2018 meetings and we likely will not by the September 30th deadline. Corinne Reczek’s herculean efforts yielded Special points of significant increases in membership through the year (thank you, Corinne!), but last-minute challenges to our mem- interest: bership drive will keep us just below 1,000. This means that we will likely have five, rather than six, paper sessions at the 2018 meeting. I received many excellent suggestions for session topics—so many, that I could not accommodate • Interview with Reeder Award them all this year even if we had 15 sessions! In keeping with the theme for the 2018 ASA meeting (Feeling Race: An winner! Invitation to Explore Racialized Emotions), one of our sessions will focus on “Race, Racism, and Health: Patterns and • Guest column—Chronic Ill- Processes.” I have also committed to our traditional roundtable sessions and to sessions on “Medical Education” and ness, Multiple Morbidity & “The Politics of Health and Health Care.” The final session topic will be announced soon! Social Connectedness To my delight, our listserv manager, Lilla Pivnick from the University of Texas at Austin, has agreed to stay on for anoth- • Check out the new officers’ er year. Lilla will package section announcements to be distributed once each week. If you have an announcement you columns would like to share with section members, please direct it to [email protected] or [email protected]. As you can see, the Medical Sociology Newsletter will continue to make it your way, under the stewardship of Ann Bell and Barret Michalec, our dedicated and talented editors. You can also follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/ medicalsocasa and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MedicalSociologyASA/. Please do not hesitate to share your thoughts about the section throughout the year. At this challenging time in our nation’s history, the insights medical sociology provides into power, privilege, and politics have heightened relevance. I look forward to working with all of you as we develop our plans for the 2018 meeting. Page 2 Medical Sociology Newsletter
2017 ASA Award Winners!
Leo G. Reeder Award Winner: Kathy Charmaz! Left: Kathy Charmaz and Deb Umberson
Below: Brea Perry and Deb Umberson
Brea L. Perry wins Freidson Award! The 2017 Eliot Freidson Outstanding Publication Award was for a journal article published in the preceding two years. We received 33 excellent nominations, and it was exciting to see all of the cutting-edge work being done in this field. But we had a clear winner: Brea L. Perry for her article, “Gendering genetics: Biological contingencies in the protective effects of social integration for men and women” which appeared in the American Journal of Sociology in 2016. The committee described the article “intellectually creative,” “ground-breaking,” and “a truly exciting piece of sociology.” Congratulations to Brea! The committee also decided to give an honorable mention to Corrinne Reczek and colleagues for their article “Family Structure and Child Health: Does the Sex Composition of Parents Matter?" which appeared in Demography in 2016. This is an excellent analysis of an issue that continues to make headlines, and it is just the kind of top-notch social science that can directly contribute to public debates. Finally, I would like thank my fellow committee members - Renee Anspach, Jason Houle, and Joanna Kempner - for their service to the section by serving on this time-intensive committee. ~ Rene Almeling
Tiffany Joseph & Helen Marrow win the Donald W. Light Award! The 2017 recipients of the Donald Light Award for the Applied or Public Practice of Medical Sociology are Helen Marrow (Tuffs University) and Tiffany Joseph (SUNY-Stony Brook) for their paper, “Excluded and Frozen Out: Unauthorized Immigrants’ (Non) Access to Care after Healthcare Reforms”. This article was pub- lished in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2015). Although there were excellent nominations to consider, the committee felt that this article best exemplified the spirit of the Light Award in its insightful use of concepts and methods of medical sociology to an applied issue or problem of significance.
The article pulls together two case studies the authors conducted independently: one in San Francisco and the other in Boston. In both locations, the researcher conducted interviews with safety-net health care providers and staff. Marrow and Joseph paint a regrettable paradox. On the one hand, however imperfect, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has reduced barriers to care for some medically underserved groups. On the other hand, the coverage expansion under the ACA has left one group, unauthorized immigrants, more starkly abandon than ever. Marrow and Joseph infuse this policy story with theoretical richness by bringing the socio- logical literature on symbolic and social boundaries to bear. They note, “[t]he ACA has generated an important boundary shift that produces and even stronger and clearer separation of unauthorised immigrants from the rest of the morally “deserving” US body politic in the health care domain (Marrow and Joseph 2015: 2). In other words, when policy boundaries shift and some outsiders become insiders, those still left out are even more socially and symbolical marginalized. Even as unauthorized immigrants have been left out of the U.S. health care system for a half century, Marrow and Joseph compelling assert that the boundaries excluding them have become “brighter” with the implementation of the ACA. Both the San Francisco and Boston cases reveal the brighten- ing of the real and symbolic boundaries that demarcate unauthorized immigrants in the wake of the ACA; but, the authors also harvest their case studies for policy insights that might soften or blur the boundaries and hence lessen some of their deleterious effects vis-à-vis health care access.
This article is a wonderful illustration not only of theoretical informed applied and public sociology, but also of the power of instru- mental collaboration. Through this innovative collaborative research effort, Marrow and Joseph produced something that is more impactful than the sum of the parts! They are to be commended for their collaborative scholarly achievement. Above: Donald Light and Tiffany Joseph Thus, the Light Award committee, composed of Taylor Hargrove, Corinne Reczek, Gabriel Fosu, Georgiann Davis and Kristin (Helen Marrow, not pictured) Barker, awarded Marrow and Joseph the 2017 Light Award for the Applied or Public Practice of Medical Sociology. ~Kristin Barker Volume 54, Issue 1 Page 3
Left: Tania Jenkins and Richard Carpiano
Tania Jenkins Wins Simmons Award! The 2017 Roberta Simmons Dissertation Award Committee was composed of four members: Richard Carpiano (Chair), Tony Brown (Rice University, 2016 Chair), Kelly Underman (University of Illinois-Chicago, 2016 Winner), and Dawne Mouzon (Rutgers University, who was invited by the committee to serve as the external fourth member). The committee selected Tania Jenkins as the 2017 recipient for her paper “Solitary versus Supported Autonomy: How Stratification in Medical Education Shapes Approaches to Patient Care.”
Tania received her Ph.D. from Brown University and is about to begin her appointment as Assistant Professor of Sociology at Temple University. She is currently completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago.
Tania’s dissertation paper investigates how residency programs stratify the training of American physicians. Specifically, she focuses on US medical graduates (“USMDs”) versus osteopathic and international medical graduates (“non-USMDs”). Non-USMDs fill one-third of residency positions because of shortages of American graduates, but are often informally excluded from top residency positions predominantly filled by USMDs. Based on fieldwork and in-depth interviews at two highly segregated internal medicine programs, Tania’s analyses reveal important differences in the supervisory structure and overall clinical training between US and non-US MDs as well as the potential, significant consequences of this stratification for inequalities in patient care.
As Chair, I wish to acknowledge the time and careful attention that the committee members paid to reviewing this year’s submissions.
~Richard Carpiano
Alex Barnard is the Louise Johnson Scholar! Alex Barnard (University of California, Berkeley) won the 2017 Louise Johnson Scholar award for his ASA conference paper titled “The Bureaucratic (Non) Production of ‘Human Kinds’: Handicap Psychique and the Mentally Disordered in France.” His paper tracks transformation of the mentally disordered in the post-asylum age through an analysis of the French government’s largely unsuccessful attempt to re-classify the mentally ill as ‘psychically handicapped’ and to move the locus of their care from the health to the disability sector. Relying on fifteen months of observations across multiple bureaucratic decision-making contexts and 215 qualitative interviews, Alex’s research continues important medical sociology work exposing the role of political stakeholders in drawing medi- cal boundaries.
~Tony Brown
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Suzan Walters wins the Howard B. Kaplan Memorial Award! Suzan Walters (State University of New York at Stony Brook) won the 2017 Howard B. Kaplan Memorial Award in Medical Soci- ology because her research examines self-concept and health, and how deviance and the morality of disease intersect. Her dissertation examines awareness of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) used for the prevention of HIV in the United States. Alt- hough policy makers have emphasized the need to use PrEP to end the HIV epidemic, studies on awareness of PrEP are limited, especially among at-risk populations, other than men who have sex with men. Suzie’s work fills this gap by using qualitative and quantitative methods to examine awareness of PrEP among high risk populations, with particular attention given to people who inject drugs.
Right: Suzan Walters and Tony Brown ~Tony Brown Page 4 Medical Sociology Newsletter
Teaching Ophra Leyser-Whalen & Adelle Monteblanco [email protected] [email protected] CUREs (not the medical kind)
We are excited to take on the challenge of writing the teaching columns! Many of our columns will focus on Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs); thus, we devote our first column to introducing this high-impact educational practice. There are many benefits of undergraduate research (UR), particularly for students coming from backgrounds with fewer resources1-6. CUREs are one avenue to increase UR knowledge, where a whole class engages in at least one aspect of research of interest to the science community. Following the topic of this newsletter, chronic illness, we looked at medical sociology syllabi in TRAILS, where we discovered that several instructors integrate an interview with an individual living with a chronic illness into the coursework. This could be considered a CURE if it were developed into a mini-module on research that makes an original or creative contribution such as: developing a research question, conducting a literature review, writing interview questions, submitting an IRB proposal, transcribing interviews, coding data, writing up results, etc. To learn more about UR and CUREs, please visit the Council on Undergraduate Research: https://www.cur.org/. References: Bauer, K.W., & Bennett, J.S. (2003). Alumni perceptions used to assess undergraduate research experience. The Journal of Higher Education, 74(2): 210-230.
Corwin, L.A., Graham, M.J., & Dolan, E.L. (2015). Modeling course-based undergraduate research experiences: an agenda for future research and evaluation. CBE- Life Sciences Education, 14(1): 1-13.
Craney, C., McKay, T., Mazzeo, A., Morris, J., Prigodich, C. & de Groot, R. (2011). Cross-discipline perceptions of the undergraduate research experience. The Journal of Higher Education, 82(1): 92-113.
Ishiyama, J. (2002). Does early participation in undergraduate research benefit social science and humanities students? College Student Journal, 36(3): 380- 387.
Kremer, J.F., & Bringle, R.G. (1990). The effects of an intensive research experience on the careers of talented undergraduates. Journal of Research and Develop- ment in Education, 24(1): 1-5.
Russell, S.H., Hancock, M.P., & McCullough, J. (2007). Benefits of undergraduate research experiences. Science, 316: 548-549.
Health Policy Thomas Mackie [email protected]
For medical sociologists who study chronic illness, the imperative to translate our sociological understandings into policy and practice -relevant messages has never been greater. Considerable gains in access to health care coverage for those with chronic illness (especially adults) stand to be lost if healthcare reform proposals, like the recently failed Graham-Cassidy Bill, should pass. Myriad sociological insights might inform relevant policy and practice proposals, whether providing empirical insights into areas such as inequities associated with chronic illness, social determinants of health, among others.
In this column, I outline resources to assist sociologists in messaging our findings for broader audiences, including policymakers and practitioners. While a num- ber of barriers may prevent us from seeking to disseminate our research especially through social media (see article by David Grande and colleagues here), re- sources are available to assist in translation and dissemination of our work.
Academy Health (a professional organization for health services researchers) hosts a Dissemination and Translation Institute (available here) with a number of resources to facilitate translation of our work; for example, webinars are available on how to engage new audiences through “twitter” and disseminate findings through tweets (available here and here, respectively). The Research Information Network (a policy unit in England) developed a website (available here) providing tools in how to use social media to disseminate research findings. This site provides both a list of available social media outlets and case examples of successful researcher-led dissemination efforts. The Canadian National Collaborating Centres for Public Health seek to incentivize use of the best available evidence among public health practitioners and policymakers (available here). Their website provides methods and tools for researchers to facilitate knowledge translation. Please send any additional resources you’ve found helpful and send to me at [email protected] and I’ll collate these for our membership. Volume 54, Issue 1 Page 5
Career & Employment Katrina Kimport [email protected]
I’m delighted to contribute my first column as the career and employment chair. For many readers, fall is the peak of the academ- ic job market season. I am sure many of you are revising research and teaching statements and tailoring your cover letters as I write this. In the past, this column has included many excellent web resources for job postings and I encourage readers to review past newsletters for suggestions. In this column, though, I want to highlight a resource that isn’t a website or a job listings platform: weak ties. As Mark Granovet- ter argued in his classic 1973 AJS article, there is strength in weak ties. Weak ties are connections between people whose social networks do not have a high degree of overlap. Whereas when we have strong ties to someone (that is, our networks overlap a great deal), we tend to already be familiar with the same opportunities, weak ties can mean exposure to new opportunities. Leveraging your weak ties can increase your pool of opportunities—for jobs, for mentoring, for new research collaborations. There are technologically-enabled tools like LinkedIn that can help you connect to those weak ties, showing you the extended networks of people in your net- work. It’s important to not lose sight of direct personal connections as well. If you’re on the job market, talk to people in your professional and personal net- works about what kind of position you’re seeking. Ask them about their job hunting experiences and for suggestions of other people they know who might be able to offer insight into finding the right fit for you. Think of it as snowball sampling for professional development. You may be surprised at the strength of your own weak ties.
Student News & Views Alaz Kilicaslan [email protected]
Hello! Since this is my first column, I would like to start by introducing myself. I am Alaz Kilicaslan, a graduate student in Sociology at Boston University. I have the pleasure of being the student editor of the newsletter this academic year. My research merges sociology of healthcare, organizational studies, and economic sociology to understand how healthcare is delivered, and who has access to it, in a global context. My dissertation looks at the moral economy of healthcare reform in Turkey by examining how government agencies, medi- cal professionals and clients negotiate and ultimately shape the healthcare delivery through interactions in organizational settings.
As the student editor, I will interview a scholar for each issue and coordinate the Student News and Views section of the newsletter. I aim to utilize this col- umn and interviews with two goals in mind. First, I would like to start an ongoing dialogue among graduate students about how we can translate our research into policy and make our teaching better and more relevant for changing times. We live in exciting times regarding the state of the U.S. healthcare system in the midst of the debates around several GOP healthcare bills and Senator Sanders’ recent “Medicare-for-all” bill. I think we have the potential to turn this into an opportunity by showing that medical sociology research and teaching have a lot to contribute to these debates. For example, Professor Emeritus Kathy Charmaz, whom I interviewed for this issue, suggests that medical sociology, despite substantially contributing to understanding chronic illness, had much less influence in affecting social policies. As nearly one in two Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition- most qualifying as ‘pre-existing conditions’ in the vocabulary of the insurance industry- shedding light on these people’s daily experiences can play a role in policy decisions to come.
Second, I want to focus on how we can strengthen the links between medical sociology and other subfields of the discipline and foster further collaboration across the globe among medical sociologists. With that goal, I intend to conduct interviews with scholars doing innovative research with implications across subfields, and with those having a global or comparative focus. I would also like to hear from you about your experiences conducting research that bridges subfields or disciplines as well as research on contexts outside the U.S.
For the next issues, keeping in line with what past editors have done, I plan to investigate useful online sources for medical sociologists. To share your ideas and experiences with me through the Student News and Views column, or if you have suggestions about interviewees or online sources please contact me at [email protected]
Visit our website at http://www2.asanet.org/medicalsociology/ Page 6 Medical Sociology Newsletter
Guest Column: Chronic illness, multiple morbidity and social connectedness By Bie Nio Ong, Emerita Professor, Keele University, UK
People living with chronic illness have been given with an important role within the family and that bring people together, and participants are a voice through pioneering researchers such as through ‘pacing herself’ this can be continued involved in the design, delivery and evaluation of Kathy Charmaz, Catherine Kohler Riessman and despite ill-health. Helping with childcare makes the programme. Arthur Frank in the USA, and Mike Bury, Gareth her feel needed, and the loving relationship with Audrey has always led a busy life. Married for 40 Williams and Anne Rogers in the UK. Following on her grandson got her through a difficult time after years, she raised five children, worked in a Vol- from them the complexity of the chronic illness her divorce. Another woman talks about her close unteer Centre, was actively involved in the Wom- experience has been studied by many researchers, relationship with her sister where mutual ex- en’s Institute and travelled the globe …enjoying and it is increasingly apparent that multiple mor- change of both physical and psychological sup- a clean bill of health for 84 years. However, in bidity has become the norm rather than contend- port means that ‘they keep each other going’. 2011 that all changed. Audrey contracted two ing with a single chronic illness. This has refocused Thus, coping with adversity is fundamentally con- bouts of sepsis in four months and then needed research on how people experience the fluctua- nected with individuals’ desire to maintain a so- a hip replacement. Whilst this was healing she tions within and between their conditions. Our cial role. was diagnosed with breast cancer and required team at Keele university has built upon previous Chronic conditions are not static and require con- another operation. Spinal stenosis left her research, and we have concentrated our attention stant evaluation and adaptation. Equally, changes house-bound then her other hip needed replac- on a number of themes that have been less well happen in individuals’ personal life, and conse- ing. The final straw was when she began to suffer documented. First, shifting the theoretical ap- quently we have taken a life course approach in from double-vision and at 88 had to stop driving. proach from a deficit model that emphasises dis- our studies. The experience of multiple morbidity Feeling like she’d lost her independence, Audrey ease to an asset model that highlights people’s is shaped by social relations, the structure of was at an all-time low: ability to maintain a sense of identity and self over people’s networks and the degree to which they “I spent five years never really recovering from time in the face of adversity (Gattuso’s notion of are socially connected. Changes in health status one thing before the next thing happened. It felt resilience). Second, we are interested in the re- and changes in social context interact. For exam- relentless and I couldn’t see a way out. So I went sources available to people at an individual level – ple, one woman’s deteriorating health means she to see my local GP and that’s when I heard about such as resilience – and at the interpersonal level has to let her husband do heavy household duties, Brightlife.” – such as social connectedness and social sup- and accept that the changing division of labour is port. Brightlife’s social prescribing coordinator helped necessary and something to be negotiated. For Audrey to find local activities that she might We have adopted Fortin and colleagues’ definition another man making decisions about re-arranging enjoy and that would help her to meet new peo- of multiple morbidity: the coexistence of two or his home care package is an important symbol of ple including an art club and a creative writing more conditions in a single individual. However, independence, and shows that he is concerned class run by the Brightlife-funded social enter- our study participants often do not identify them- with the lightening the load on his children. prise, Community Compass. With the encour- selves with this ‘clinical’ label for a number of Our studies highlight that shifting the focus to an agement of the group leaders and her new reasons: a condition may be well controlled asset-based approach and looking at multiple friends, she rekindled her love of poetry, discov- through medication, concurrent conditions inter- morbidity within a life course perspective allows ered she could draw and started up a scrabble act and the impact on daily life is a ‘total’ experi- for a better understanding of the interplay be- group: ence, older people do not necessarily make the tween health and social aspects. Enhancing gen- “I realised I’d been bored stiff and was going distinction between decline as part of normal eral well-being and maintaining a meaningful life down without having other people around me. ageing or loss of function through disease. Fur- are prioritised by many individuals. Social con- All I really needed was something fun to do and thermore, the way multiple morbidity is experi- nectedness plays a crucial role in their ability to someone to do it with!” enced varies considerably between individuals. respond to multiple morbidity and creatively draw The resulting complexity demands a more nuanced Since her first introduction to Brightlife, Audrey on their resilience and other resources. To end, 89 theoretical approach if we are to make sense of has not looked back; she had her poems pub- -year old Audrey vividly illustrates this argument. how multiple morbidity is experienced within a lished in the local newspaper and now helps to social context. The background to Audrey’s example is the Chesh- run an over 50s social group in her local village ire-based Brightlife programme supporting other people find their way out of Two of the overriding concerns of our study partici- (www.brightlifecheshire.org.uk). Brightlife is a social isolation. pants are their sense of identity and continuing partnership of voluntary, public and private sector valued activities. The key elements of identity that organisations focused on reducing loneliness and people talk about are independence, making social isolation amongst people aged 50 years adjustments and reciprocity. One woman explains and over. The programme establishes innovative With thanks to Audrey Thomas and Cath Logan. that looking after her grandchildren provides her and engaging projects, activities and networks Volume 54, Issue 1 Page 7
Interview with a Scholar: Kathy Charmaz, 2017 Reeder Award Winner
By Alaz Kilicaslan
For this issue of the newsletter, I was fortunate enough to interview Professor Emerita Kathy Charmaz, the recipient of Leo G. Reeder Award for 2017. Kathy Charmaz recently retired as Professor of Sociology and Director of the Faculty Writing Program at Sonoma State University where she was affiliated for forty-three years.
How has medical sociology evolved since you’ve entered the field? What recent medical sociology research do you find particularly exciting?
Like the larger discipline, medical sociology has expanded its remit. Medical sociologists study a wide range of areas, and work in diverse settings that call for dis- parate types of studies. Roger Strauss’s distinction between a sociology of medicine and a sociology in medicine still resonates with many of our colleagues, alt- hough the boundaries can be hazy. In my view, the intensity of qualitative-quantitative divides has lessened over the years and mutual appreciation has grown. The interpretive turn throughout the social sciences has deepened and enriched medical sociology. Current interest in mixed methods also affects our field. Medical sociology is exceptionally well-suited to mixed methods studies in which qualitative and quantitative elements complement each other. As for exciting research, recent studies of the effects of biomedicine on ordinary people’s lives intrigue me, such as Janet Shim’s book, Heart-Sick: The Politics of Risk, Inequality, and Heart Disease.
One stream of your research focuses on chronic illness. How has medical sociology contributed to understanding and acting upon chronic illness? What are the potential avenues for future research?
Not surprisingly, I think medical sociology has made substantial contributions to understanding chronic illness! We have increased awareness of the difference between acute and chronic illness, losses that people incur, stigma, and the spiraling effects of debilitating illness on individuals, families, and society, to name a few areas of study. Now our participants in research become evaluators of our research. The internet has made our research public for those who care to pursue it. Our studies become sources of comparison—and often affirmation—for people with chronic illnesses and their families. They may choose to act on what they learn from our writings.
In my view, medical sociology has had less influence in altering societal policies and practices concerning chronic illness. More needs to be done to connect indi- vidual experience with policies to serve people with chronic illnesses. Making these connections is one area for more research. Others include studies that further document how health disparities not only impose suffering on individuals but also diminish the quality of collective life. I have long argued that the situations of chronically ill people allow us to see fundamental dilemmas in adult life with uncommon clarity. Tensions between individual and social responsibility, choice and coercion, acceptance and rejection, isolation and inclusion all become evident and all merit future study.
You’re also known for your contribution on qualitative methodology and theory building. What do you think about the criticism coming from fellow sociologists out- side the subfield and some journal editors that the medical sociology research is often 'thin' on theory?
We can look at your question from several different angles. First, what sociologists mean by the term “theory” differs although some colleagues may take for grant- ed that their definition of theory is shared and singular. I advise subjecting our assumptions about theory to rigorous self-scrutiny. From a practical standpoint, subject the journal editors’ assumptions about theory to rigorous scrutiny, too. How do they use the term? Look at the articles published during their editorial term. What place does theory hold in these articles? How does your work compare? I’m all for pushing boundaries and expanding borders but I like authors to be aware when their work lies outside the usual boundaries.
Second, in line with my response to your first question, medical sociology includes many projects for purposes other than theory. Theoretical exploration, explica- tion, application, or construction may not be an author’s main objective. Medical sociologists interested in public sociology, for example, aim to reach audiences beyond our field and discipline. In her book, Waiting for Cancer to Come: Women’s Experiences with Genetic Testing and Medical Decision Making for Breast and Ovarian Cancer, Sharlene Hesse-Biber aims to provide a critical analysis of the implications of genetic testing and treatment and bring women’s stories to life. The book speaks to women at risk of developing cancer, their families, and healthcare providers as well as to sociologists.
Third, the editors of our general journals have a point. A number of medical sociology papers offer a limited—and light—application of earlier theory without offering original insights about it. If you wish to submit a manuscript to such a journal, I advise going beyond application. Theoretically-informed studies that generate both new empirical findings and fresh theoretical implications would better fit these journals. William Cockerham’s edited volume, Medical Sociology on the Move: New Directions in Theory, charts diverse ways theory currently intersects with medical sociology and may help new scholars to position their work. Although I’m a ground- ed theorist, I never accepted the notion that “discovering” theory required theoretical ignorance.
Last, we can transcend the criticisms by showing how our work advances theory even though it may represent a novel form of theory and a new way of theorizing.
Page 8 Medical Sociology Newsletter
Book Raffle at 2017 ASA Meeting
Overcoming customs and currency challenges, the Section book raffle raised a record $500 for the Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation in Medical Soci- ology Award this year! Seventeen individuals and publishers donated thirty-two books, most of which were displayed and raffled off at the Medical Sociology Sec- tion Reception, August 12, 2016 at the ASA meetings in Montréal, Québec. A few books were not allowed into the country, and unfortunately those boxes are cur- rently missing in the post. We hope to have them back to mail out to recipients in September. The success of the raffle was made possible only through the gener- ous donations of the following publishers and individuals: University of Chicago Press, Duke University Press, Harvard University Press, University of Minnesota Press, National Academies Press, Sage Publishing, Springer, University of Toronto Press, Susan Bell, Deborah Carr, Allan Horowitz, Don Light, Laura Mauldin, Bill Murphy, Alondra Nelson, Brea Perry, Sherrill Sellers, and Janet Shim. We could not have done it without each of you, and we sincerely hope that you will contribute again next year. A special thank you to Erynn Casanova, Alexa Justice, Jeremy Levoy, Stef Murawsky, and Sara Rubin for their help with the raffle. As I transition to my new role as the section’s Secretary-Treasurer, Sara will take over as the book raffle chair for 2018-2020. Many thanks to her for taking on this essential task, and as always, thank you to our donors and our raffle participants for making the fundraiser such a success! ~Danielle Bessett & Sara Rubin
Didn’t enter the raffle? Here are the books you missed!
Metrics: What Counts in Global Health, by Vincanne Adams Innovations in the Treatment of Substance Addiction, edited by André Luiz Monezi Andrade and Denise De Micheli Risky Medicine: Our Quest to Cure Fear and Uncertainty, by Robert Aronowitz Reimagining (Bio)Medicalization, Pharmaceuticals, and Genetics: Old Critiques and New Engagements, edited by Susan E. Bell and Anne E. Figert Men and Their Dogs: A New Understanding of Man’s Best Friend, edited by Christopher Blazina and Lori R. Kogan Worried Sick: How Stress Hurts Us and How to Bounce Back, by Deborah Carr Border Lives: Fronterizos, Transnational Migrants, and Commuters in Tijuana, by Sergio Chavez Biomedicalization: Technoscience, Health, and Illness in the U.S., edited by Adele E. Clarke, Laura Mamo, Jennifer Ruth Fosket, Jennifer R. Fishman, and Janet K. Shim Compound Solutions: Pharmaceutical Alternatives for Global Health, by Susan Craddock Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness, by Pete Earley Precarious Prescriptions: Contested Histories of Race and Health in North America, edited by Laurie B. Green, John Mckiernan-González, and Martin Summers Stories from the Front of the Room: How Higher Education Faculty of Color Overcome Challenges and Thrive in the Academy, edited by Michelle Harris, Sherrill L. Sellers, Orly Clerge, and Frederick W. Gooding, Jr. Blood Sugar: Racial Pharmacology and Food Justice in Black America, by Anthony Ryan Hatch Creating Mental Illness, by Allan V. Horowitz All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry's Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental Disorders, by Allan V. Horowitz and Jerome C. Wakefield The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder, by Allan V. Horowitz and Jerome C. Wakefield Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri Fixing Medical Prices: How Physicians Are Paid, by Miriam J. Laugesen Good Pharma: The Public-Health Model of the Mario Negri Institute, by Donald W. Light and Antonio F. Maturo Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables, by J. Scott Long Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children, by Laura Mauldin Resources for Teaching Mindfulness: An International Handbook, by Donald McCown, Diane Reibel, and Marc S. Micozzi Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity, by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and Health and Medicine Division The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome, by Alondra Nelson Practical Strategies and Tools to Promote Treatment Engagement, edited by William O'Donohue, Larry James, and Cassandra Snipes 50 Years after Deinstitutionalization: Mental Illness in Contemporary Communities, by Brea L. Perry Genetics, Health and Society: Advanced in Medical Sociology, edited by Brea L. Perry The Technoscientific Witness of Rape: Contentious Histories of Law, Feminism, and Forensic Science, by Andrea Quinlan Body by Darwin: How Evolution Shapes Our Health and Transforms Medicine, by Jeremy Taylor Saving Babies: The Consequences of Newborn Genetic Screening, by Stefan Timmermans and Mara Buchbinder Narratives of Recovery from Serious Mental Illness, by William Tucker Knowledge in the Time of Cholera: The Struggle over American Medicine in the Nineteenth Century, by Owen Whooley Volume 54, Issue 1 Page 9
Get Connected Simon Geletta & Mel Jeske [email protected] [email protected] This summer Melanie (Mel) Jeske has joined the website and social media team as an associate webmaster for the section. Mel is a PhD candidate at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research spans medical sociology, science and technology studies, and history of science and medicine. Mel will be overseeing and reporting on the section members’ social media activities. Please help me welcome Mel to her new role! Website Visits Over the last couple of years since our website was migrated to the ASA server we have observed a steady increase in the number of indi- viduals that visit our section website every quarter. The site traffic during this last summer season (between June and September), has reached a new post-migration record – with 353 visitors and 514 page views. The graph below breaks down the individuals by whether they are returning visitors or new visitors. The age distribution graph above shows that contrary to the traditional pattern of the dominance of young adults (presumably students) as the most frequent visitors, this last season individuals in the age 25-34 have become the most frequent visitors. Note that the graph is based on 243 visitors whose ages could be determined (i.e., about 69% of the visitors). Female visitors still dominate male visitors in frequency of visit, although the margin is somewhat narrowing. Social Media Activities Our social media reach remains stable since our last update. Our Facebook page is currently at 1,8933 “likes” or followers with our “reach” on each post vary- ing from 10 people to 500 people (generally for job ads). Our Twitter currently has 940 followers and we average 1-3 tweets per week, depending on the number of announcements and responses to other accounts tweeting us.
Please contact Mel ([email protected]) if you have anything you’d like posted to our social media accounts!
Figure 1 Website Visit by the type of visitors Figures 2 & 3 Demographic Characteristics of Visitors (n = 353) between June 30 and August 31, 2017
Notes from the Newsletter Editors Welcome to the first issue of the 2017-2018 Medical Sociology Newsletter! We thoroughly enjoyed putting together Volume 53 last year . We hope to continue keeping the section informed and involved. The newsletter relies on its contributors. In particular, we thank last year’s columnists, Miranda Waggoner, Laura Senier, Kellie Owens, and Deb Umberson. We are thrilled to have Simon Geletta and Thomas Mackie returning and look forward to the contributions of our new columnists, Jane McLeod, Ophra Leyser-Whalen (along with Adelle Monteblanco), Katrina Kimport , Mel Jeske, and Alaz Kilicaslan. As always, we welcome your comments and feedback on the newsletter and look forward to the upcoming issues! —Ann V. Bell ([email protected]) & Barret Michalec ([email protected])
Post Notices on the ASA Medical Sociology Section List
Winter 2018
Volume 54, Issue 2 Medical Sociology Newsletter
NOTES FROM THE CHAIR Inside this issue: By Jane McLeod [email protected]
Notes from the Chair 1 Welcome to the new year! I considered saying a few words about the current status of the Affordable Care Act 2018 Reeder Award 2-3 but realized that anything I write now will be out-of-date by the time this newsletter Winner reaches your inbox. Such is the state of things! Call for ASA Award 4 Nominations Instead, I will encourage all of you to submit papers to one of the section sessions we have planned for ASA 2018. The sessions cover a wide range of topics: Race, Racism, and Health; Teaching 5 the Politics of Health; Medical Education; the Reduction of Health Inequalities; and Health, Health Care, and New Technologies. We are also co-sponsoring a session with the Sex and Gender section on Gender, Health, and Medicine. If you prefer something more relaxed and Health Policy 5 interactive, consider submitting to our roundtable session. The deadline for submissions is January 11, 2018. In addition to these sessions, we are working on plans to offer a visit to the National Board of Medical Examiners (thanks to Monica Cuddy, Kelly Underman, and friends) Career & Employment 6 and have proposed a symposium on medical sociology in practice settings (thanks to Katrina Kimport). A lot to look forward to! Student News & Views 6 See inside for David Mechanic’s tribute to the impressive career of this year’s Leo G. Reeder Guest Column: Award recipient, Paul Cleary and for a series of articles on the timely topic of “Guns, Gun Vio- 7 David Yamane lence, and Guns as a Public Health Issue.”
Many thanks to Ann Bell and Barret Michalec for organizing another outstanding newsletter. If Scholar Interview: 8-9 you are looking for an outlet for your creative energy, Ann and Barret’s term as newsletter co- Dr. Sandro Galea editors ends this summer. Contact me if you are interested. Get Connected 10
Special points of interest: Announcement of 2018 Reeder Award Winner!
A focus on Gun Violence as a Public Health Issue
Interview with Dr. Sandro Galea Post Notices on the ASA Medical Sociology Section List Guest Column by David
2018 Reeder Award Winner: Paul D. Cleary
Paul D. Cleary to Receive the 2018 Leo G. Reeder Award
Paul Cleary, the Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Yale School of Public Health, with secondary positions as Professor of Sociology and in the Institute for Policy Studies, will receive the 2018 Leo G. Reeder Award for a Distinguished Career in Medical Sociology, the highest honor of the ASA Medical Sociology Section. He has recently completed a ten year term (2006-2017) as Dean of the Yale School of Public Health, and continues to direct the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, an all university enterprise that has provided infrastructure sup- port to hundreds of research and training grants involving more than 150 affiliated scientists. In his more than 300 research articles ranging widely among important areas in medical sociology and public health he has made fundamental contributions to understanding processes and quality of care in such areas as HIV and cardiovascular disease among others. These publications appear in the best journals in medical sociology, medicine, and public health including numerous papers in JHSB, ASR, Social Science and Medicine, JAMA, the New Eng- land Journal of Medicine, Milbank Quarterly and Health Affairs among others. His studies of how social, organizational, and clinical factors affect care processes have been influential not only in research but also in changing the ways care is provided and evaluated. In addition, he has had a leading role in developing and implementing new methodologies for research and evaluation, prominent among them the Consumer Assessment of Health Care Providers and Systems (CAHPS) surveys which are widely used for quality improvement by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and many other organizations and research efforts involved in improving quality of care.
Paul received his B. S. degree in Physics from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and was recruited to a graduate traineeship in medical sociology and then sociological methodology, providing him both the substantive and advanced research tools to excel in the years ahead. He received both an M.S. and Ph.D. in sociology from Wisconsin. After spending a final year as lecturer at Wisconsin, he moved to Rutgers where he was briefly an assistant research professor and then an associate research professor in the Department of Sociology and the School of Social Work between 1979 and 1982. In 1982, he moved to Harvard University as an assistant professor in the Department of Social Medicine and Health Policy and subsequently Department of Health Care Policy in the Harvard Medical School and a lecturer in the Department of Behavioral Sciences in the Harvard School of Public Health, advancing to full professor at Harvard in 1993. He continued an active professional and research life at Harvard , with appointments at Beth Israel Hos- pital and the Brigham and Womens Hospital, until his appointment as Dean of Public Health at Yale in 2006.
In addition to his academic, research and administrative responsibilities, Paul was Editor of the Milbank Quarterly from 1992 to 2000, and in 1998 became the Editorial Director for the Milbank Memorial Fund until 2013. He also held editorial positions over these years with the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the Journal of Culture, Medicine and Society, the Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, Health Services Research, and Health Expectations.
Paul’s early work at Wisconsin focused on studies of health behavior, on how patients perceived and responded to symptoms, how people used medical care and the management of psychiatric symptoms and behavioral disorders within primary care. He also carried out research and theoretical work on smoking and other behavioral conditions. He continued with many research studies on the impact of gender , social class and other social factors in the epidemiology of disease and care seeking but as his career proceeded he focused intensively on persons with HIV and in improving the quality of care for people with AIDS and more generally throughout the health care system. He took leadership of a key aspect of the HIV Costs and Services Utilization Study (HSCUS) , the most ambitious national study of HIV care , examining how physician and clinic characteristics impacted the quality of care. He also did a major national evaluation, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation of quality improvement efforts in HIV clinics supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration.
It would be impossible to more than touch on a few of the large number of important involvements Paul has had in implementing the understanding and findings from his work and that of his collaborators. Few of our outstanding medial sociologists have had anywhere near the large influence Paul has had on advancing health research and helping to shape national and international health policy. His magnificent research on AIDS , quality of care, patient empowerment and psychiatric epidemiology sets an extraordinary standard for our profession.
Between 1994 and 1999, Paul was a Founding Member and Vice-President of Research for the Picker Institute, a national organization focused on promoting patient-centered care and improving the quality of hospital care. In 2012, he received the Picker Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Patient-Centered Care. In 2003, Paul was appointed to the National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program , a group of many of the most distinguished health policy investigators in the country. After two years on this advisory committee he was selected from its 17 members to chair this group, a position he held until 2016. In this challenging task he demonstrated what was apparent in so many aspects of his work and life, extraordinary knowledge and wisdom ,kindness, respect and fairness for all participants, and an im- pressive lack of ego.
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Paul’s many contributions have not been unnoticed and he has received an abundant share of honors. Among them was his election to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (Now the National Academy of Medicine), Election as a Distinguished Fellow of Academy Health, and re- ceipt of its coveted Distinguished Investigator Award, and appointment to numerous important advisory boards, federal study sections and foundation Boards of Directors.
Everywhere Paul has been, he has been an extraordinary friend, advisor and mentor to students, colleagues, and community persons working in health. However busy he is, he always finds time to help others seeking advice and guidance, and people seek him out as a mentor and collaborator. He mentored many of the outstanding scientists at Harvard who are now leaders in health policy research. In 1997, he received the A. Clifford Barger award for Excel- lence in Mentoring from the Harvard Medical School. Paul has collaborated on research and publications with hundreds of others, ranging from under- graduates to luminaries. As someone who has worked with Paul over the years, I can attest that he always carries more than his share. I constantly en- counter students and colleagues from Wisconsin, Rutgers, Harvard and Yale who recount the wonderful help, support, and caring they received from Paul and the important role he had in their careers.
One cannot know a person simply by their vita. In addition to his many accomplishments, Paul, born in Toronto, Canada, had an international perspective and enjoyed experiences in other countries. As a graduate student, he spent a year as a research associate in the Social Psychology Research Institute in Mannheim, West Germany and in 1982 was a visiting professor in the department of sociology at the University of Stockholm. His later work on HIV ex- tended his activities in global health and brought him to many countries throughout the world. One can’t imagine a better ambassador.
Paul is also a pilot, and is constructing his own airplane. When we were working together in Marshfield, Wisconsin, a not easily accessible area in rural Wisconsin, Paul would occasionally fly his plane to our research site. He kindly offered me rides but I wasn’t into small planes. Paul arrived safely; I ended up with speeding tickets.
During Paul’s tenure at Wisconsin, we had a brilliant and dynamic student with extraordinary spirit and determination from Mississippi and Alabama in our medical sociology program, Cynthia Faye Barnett, who Paul linked up with and later wisely married. On entering the program, it was her aspiration to develop the tools for entering political office at home to bring needed reforms. Cynthia became interested in a special program on Law, Science and Med- icine established and run by Professor Jay Katz, a visionary innovator in the field of law, medicine and ethics, and selected to delay her PhD studies to go to Yale for this unique program. Her participation in the program, and her prior medical sociology training, led to her 1977 paper Treatment Rights of Mentally Ill Nursing Home Residents in the Pennsylvania Law Review. Cynthia became increasingly interested in the law as a powerful instrument, return- ing to Yale Law School to earn her J.D. before returning to Wisconsin and completing her dissertation.
Paul and Cynthia made a wonderful pair, and when Paul moved to Boston Cynthia worked for many years for Bingham McCutchen and Goulston and Storrs. Sadly, Cynthia had a long struggle with breast cancer and passed at a far too young age. They had two beautiful children, Janet and Barnett, who have now gone on to building successful careers of their own. As a partner in a major law firm, Cynthia often had an awesome schedule, and had to put in late hours, at times all-nighters. Paul would go to the office in the middle of the night so he could return home in time for the children and dinner. This helped explain the 4am emails some of you may have received, or perhaps they still continue.
I hope this conveys the character of the person this award honors. Paul Cleary has been an extraordinary researcher and teacher in medical sociology and public health who has made massive contributions that impact the care of all of us. He has been a strong leader and model for his colleagues and stu- dents and the health field more generally in his research, teaching and professional relations. And to top it all, he is an extraordinarily nice human being.
By David Mechanic, Rutgers University
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DON’T FORGET TO RENEW YOUR SECTION MEMBERSHIP IN THE MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY SECTION! VolumePage 4 51, Issue 2 Medical Sociology Newsletter
Call for ASA Award Nominations 2019 Reeder Award The Medical Sociology Section invites nominations for the 2018 Leo G. Reeder Award to be awarded at the annual meeting of the Medical Sociology Section in New York. This award is given annually for Distinguished Contribution to Medical Sociology. This award recognizes scholarly contributions, especially a body of work displaying an extended trajectory of productivity that has contributed to theory and research in medical sociology. The Reeder Award also acknowledg- es teaching, mentoring, and training as well as service to the medical sociology community broadly defined. Please submit letter of nomination and the nomi-
nee’s curriculum vitae to Brea Perry at [email protected] with the subject line: 2019 Reeder Award Nomination. Nominations are due by April 1, 2018. Note: If a person nominated for the Reeder Award is currently a member of the Medical Sociology Section Council, the nomination will be deferred until the person is no longer on the Council.
2018 Eliot Freidson Outstanding Publication Award The Freidson Award is given in alternate years to a book or journal article published in the preceding two years that has had a major impact on the field of medical sociology. The 2018 award will be given to a book published in either 2016 or 2017. The book may deal with any topic in medical sociology, broadly defined. Self-nominations are permissible and encouraged. When making your nomination, please indicate (however briefly) the reason for the nomination. Send your nomination letter by email to Claire Decoteau at [email protected] with the subject line: 2018 Freidson Award Nomination. Nominations are due by April 1, 2018. The nominator and at least one author must be current section members
2018 Simmons Award Nominations are being accepted for the 2018 Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation in Medical Sociology Award. The award is given each year by the Medical Sociology section. The awardee will receive a $750 travel grant to attend the ASA meetings and an award certificate, and will attend the Reeder din- ner as a guest of the Medical Sociology section. Self-nominations are acceptable. Eligible candidates must have defended their doctoral dissertations within two academic years prior to the annual meeting at which the award is made. To be considered for the 2017 award, the candidate should submit an article- length paper (sole-authored), not to exceed 35 double-spaced pages (11- or 12-point font), inclusive of references. This paper may have been previously published, or may be in press or under review. A letter of recommendation from a faculty mentor familiar with the candidate’s work is also required. Electronic submission of the paper (MS Word or PDF) is required. The letter of recommendation should be sent directly by the recommender as an email attachment (MS Word or PDF). Please send all materials to Hui Liu at [email protected] with the subject line: 2018 Simmons Award Nomination. Deadline for receipt of all sub- mission materials is April 1, 2018. The nominator and nominee must be current section members.
2018 Louise Johnson Scholar The Medical Sociology Section will select a student member of the section to be the 2017 Louise Johnson Scholar. The Louise Johnson Scholar fund was es- tablished in memory of Louise Johnson, a pioneering medical sociologist whose mentorship and scholarship we are pleased to honor. The fund was made possible by Sam Bloom of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, a former colleague of Louise Johnson. The Scholar will receive travel funds up to $500 to present at the annual ASA meetings in Chicago and attend section events. Selection will be based on academic merit and the quality of an accepted ASA paper relat- ed to medical sociology; papers with faculty co-authors are ineligible. To apply, please send: 1) a copy of your acceptance notification to present at the 2017 ASA meetings, 2) a copy of your paper, 3) your CV, and 4) a letter of recommendation from a professor who can write about your academic merit. Submissions should be sent via email, as Word documents or PDFs, to Richard Carpiano at [email protected] with the subject line: 2018 Louise Johnson Scholar Nomination. Applications are due by April 1, 2018. The nominator and nominee must be current section members.
2018 Howard B. Kaplan Memorial Award in Medical Sociology This award is established to support graduate students doing research in one of the substantive areas that defined the distinguished academic career of Dr. Howard B. Kaplan, namely mental health, self-concept and health, or deviance, by providing funds up to the amount of $500 to contribute to expenses associ- ated with attending the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA). The award recipient will be invited to attend the Reeder dinner as a guest of the Medical Sociology section. Self-nominations are acceptable. To be considered for the 2018 award, the candidate should submit a CV and letter of nomination to Richard Carpiano at [email protected] with the subject line: 2018 Kaplan Award Nomination. Deadline for receipt of all submission materials is April 1, 2018. The nominee and nominator must be current section members.
2018 Donald W. Light Award for Applied Medical Sociology The Donald W. Light Award for the Applied or Public Practice of Medical Sociology is given in alternate years to a book or journal article published in the pre- ceding two years that employs the concepts and methods of medical sociology to an applied issue or problem of significance. The 2018 Light Award will be given to an article published in either 2016 or 2017. Nominations will be eligible for three years. The Light Award recognizes sociologists whose professional work or advocacy contributes to politically or ethically important challenges in health, health care, or health care policy at the national or international level. The award recipient will be invited to attend the Reeder dinner as a guest of the Medical Sociology section. Self-nominations are acceptable. To be considered for the 2018 award, the candidate should submit a letter of nomination to Debra Umberson at [email protected] with the subject line: 2018 Donald W. Light Award. Deadline for receipt of all submission materials is April 1, 2018. The nominator and at least one author must be current section members.
PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL NOMINEES MUST BE REGISTERED MEMBERS OF THE ASA TO BE CONSIDERED FOR SECTION AWARDS Volume 54, Issue 2 Page 5
Teaching Ophra Leyser-Whalen & Adelle Monteblanco [email protected] [email protected]
Gunning for CUREs
The discipline of sociology is often criticized, by both students and the public, for its perceived subjectivity and studying of common sense. Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are poised to challenge these dangerous assumptions by demonstrating the empirical nature of the discipline—moving from teaching “what we know” to “how we know it”1. The idea of gun safety as a potential public health crisis is an ample teaching tool for CUREs. Due to intentionally restricted funding, not enough research has been done on gun safety2. Thus, this could be prime material for Sociology of Health classes.
Here we offer several examples of CUREs that could be integrated throughout an entire course or a multi-week module through lessons on research and public health. During a unit on “prevention,” students could survey businesses on their active shooter response training. Within the topic of “constructing risk,” stu- dents could interview faculty about perceived gun safety on campus. For instructors who would prefer to avoid human subjects research, we suggest a content analysis of a hashtag (e.g. #guncontrol). Each of these examples support a few of the dimensions commonly associated with CUREs: discovery, relevant work, collaboration, iteration, and use of scientific principles3.
References [1] Atkinson, M.P., Czaja, R.F., & Brewster, Z.B. (2006). Integrating sociological research into large introductory courses: learning content and increasing quantitative literacy. Teaching Sociology, 34(1):54-64. [2] Branas, C. C., Flescher, A., Formica, M. K., Galea, S., Hennig, N., Liller, K. D., ... & Ying, J. (2017). Academic public health and the firearm crisis: an agenda for action. American Journal of Public Health, 107(3):365-367. [3] Auchincloss, L. C., Laursen, S. L., Branchaw, J. L., Eagan, K., Graham, M., Hanauer, D. I., ... & Dolan, E. (2014). Assessment of course-based undergraduate research experiences: a meeting report. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 13:29-40.
Health Policy Thomas Mackie [email protected]
For this special issue on gun violence and public health, there are a number of data resources and pedagogical tools available. First, the National Violent Death Reporting System is a state based surveillance system sponsored by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and available here. Forty-two states have contributed data as of 2016, with longitudinal data available (ranging from 2003- 2016). Data are available on the mechanism of injury (including but not limited to firearms), the type of firearm, the victim’s sociodem- ographic characteristics and relationship to suspect, among other variables. Additionally, the CDC also sponsors the Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Re- porting System, an interactive online database that offers information on fatal and nonfatal injury, violent death, and costs of injury from a variety of data sources. The Society for the Advancement of Violence and Injury Research (SAVIR) also has a number of webinars and resources focused on conducting research on firearm -related injuries, available here.
For engaging students in considering global implications of gun-related violence and other types of injuries, curriculum is available through WHO (available here). Additionally, the Safe States Initiative sponsors webinars and other resources on gun-related violence within the United States, including a map with state- specific publications, available here. The Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit organization, also provides national data on gun-related injuries in the United States with geospatial maps on a number of indicators (e.g., unintentional shootings, defensive use, mass shootings, etc.), available here. For those with an interest in policy regarding gun violence and public health, one can consult the work of a non-profit organization, called the Brady Campaign, available here.
This column benefited tremendously from the expertise of Dr. Bernadette Hohl, an expert on the social and environmental determinants of health and safety in neighborhoods at the Rutgers School of Public Health. VolumePage 6 51, Issue 2 Medical Sociology Newsletter
Career & Employment Katrina Kimport [email protected]
Gun violence in the U.S. is increasingly recognized as a public health issue—and appropriately so. Public health scientists are equipped to address many of the pressing questions guns pose to our society and advocate for policy change. Medical sociologists can help, contributing theoretical and analytical perspectives that attend to the social and behavioral components of gun violence. But how do we get in the proverbial “room” with public health researchers?
One way is through employment in the public health field. In the past, this column has highlighted public health job listings (check past issues for web resources). Unsurprisingly, there is a great deal of overlap in the work of medical sociology and public health. But how does one make a case for hiring a medical sociologist for a “public health” job?
Hugh Spitler’s 2001 Sociological Spectrum article, “Medical Sociology and Public Health: Problems and Prospects for Collaboration in the New Millennium,” offers some ideas. Providing useful historical context on the tensions within public health, Spitler argues that “medical sociologists are uniquely equipped to assist public health in recapturing its historical commitment to social justice.” Medical sociology, he asserts, brings to public health the tools to identify and critique the structural causes of health problems.
And what does working in a public health setting offer a medical sociologist? From a practical perspective, the broad range of public health positions (e.g. in non-profits, government, research centers, and academic departments) may better meet job seekers’ personal and professional life needs than available positions in sociology. In terms of career and job satisfaction, drawing on my own experience, I value collaborating with public health scientists because the work often affords concrete opportunities to impact public policy in ways that further social justice.
Student News & Views Alaz Kilicaslan [email protected]
For this issue of the newsletter, I interviewed Dr. Sandro Galea, the Dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, on his thoughts about guns, which claim more than 33,000 lives in the US every year. I have extracted here some of the highlights of his ac- count:
Centering the discussion on mental health is a distraction from the real issue around gun-related harm: how the US is an excep- tion in the world when it comes to availability and sheer number of guns. NRA’s lobbying efforts largely explain why there is an absence of scientific research on gun violence as well as why large segments of lay people and politicians see and defend guns as an issue of personal freedom. Sociological research on the culture of guns can contribute to changing the narrative from guns as an issue of personal liberty towards gun control and safety.
I also want to share a few webpages and articles I find particularly instructive and briefly discuss how each complements and extends Dean Galea’s points.
1.) http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ This is a wonderful source of information about a grim subject. Among a myriad of numbers, charts and expert opinions, one particularly struck me: In contrast to common perception, mass shootings cause only less than 1% of gun-related mortality.
2.) https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/columns/2017/11/06/steps-can-take-gun-violence-now/Gn5827wclmotDnLPFRwSIN/story.html This opinion piece by Sandro Galea adds more detail on what can be done to alleviate gun violence: background checks to buy firearms to keep them out of the hands of ‘dangerous’ people, including domestic abusers; requiring ‘smart guns’ that can only be used by their authorized users; and doing away with concealed-carry laws.
3.) https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/11/15/564384012/what-if-we-treated-gun-violence-like-a-public-health-crisis In this NPR story, both in text and audio format, Alison Kodjak discusses the causes and consequences of not treating gun violence as a public health issue. It is striking to see that although guns claim as many American lives as hypertension, liver disease, or car crashes, funding for gun violence has only been minuscule compared to money spent to research these other causes of mortality.
As always, if you have any suggestion about what you would like to see in this column, please do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected]. Looking forward to your thoughts and suggestions! Volume 51,54, Issue 2 Page 7
Guest Column: Understanding the Social Life of Guns David Yamane, PhD Professor of Sociology, Wake Forest University ([email protected])
In June 2017, the Pew Research Center holds and 0.0037% of guns are One need not accept the NRA mantra that reported that 70% of American adults have “responsible” for firearms homicides. “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” fired a gun at some point in their lives. That Looked at the other way around, at least to recognize that as inanimate objects guns is nearly 180 million people. Looked at the 99.978% of gun owning households and are not an independent risk factor for death other way around: A minority of American 99.996% of guns are not involved in homi- or injury. Although we can control for other adults have never shot a gun. Like many cide in any given year. Even if we add non- factors to artificially isolate guns in statisti- sociologists, I was in that minority for most fatal firearms injuries (73,505 in 2013) and cal models, ceteris paribus exists only in of my life. Consequently, until six years ago suicides (21,386 in 2014), only 0.035% of our computers. In the real world, all other when I began studying guns, I had no idea guns and 0.21% of gun-owning households things are not equal. how common and normal they are in the at most are “responsible.” Less than United States. 99.965% of guns and 99.788% of gun- Like many health disparities, the reality is owning households are associated with any that certain people with guns kill or injure Seeing guns and gun ownership as normal of these negative outcomes. themselves or other people more often un- contrasts sharply with the views of my fellow der certain circumstances. This is a lot sociologists. When I tell colleagues I am It is true that the firearms homicide, sui- harder to think about and study than a my- studying “gun culture,” they frequently hear cide, and injury rates in the U.S. are higher opic focus on guns themselves, which nec- me saying “gun violence,” since their prima- than some other countries that afford their essarily implicates the vast majority of guns ry association with guns is with deviant citizens less freedom and responsibility in and gun owners who are in no way involved behavior. Or they will respond, “Good, more this area. But it is also true that the over- in firearms deaths or injuries and never will people need to be studying gun control,” whelming majority of American citizens who be. betraying the primacy of their political views exercise this freedom do so responsibly. over their desire for greater empirical un- Just like the vast majority who exercise the The vast majority of sociologists I have met derstanding. It falls too far outside their rights to free speech and religious practice are not gun people and so, like the younger experience with and understanding of guns do so responsibly. Gun ownership overall me, have no appreciation of the complex to think of them in any way other than nega- certainly compares favorably in terms of social reality of guns. My hope is that un- tively. I understand this point of view, be- public health to alcohol consumption – derstanding the normality and innocuous- cause for the first 20 years of my academic more commonly experienced, better under- ness of the vast majority of guns and gun career, I shared this stance towards guns. stood, and consequently less criticized by owners will make studies of the modest But what can an approach to guns that sociologists – even though the same princi- amount deviant behavior committed with recognizes their normality rather than their ple that a small number of abusers are re- guns more sensitive and sophisticated. pathology do for medical sociologists? sponsible for the vast majority of the prob- lems applies. This gets at the truth highlighted by the old Although it falls outside the scope of medi- joke: How many sociologists does it take to cal sociology proper, those considering Some compare the number of vehicular change a lightbulb? Four. One to change studying guns in connection with health, deaths annually to the number of firearms the bulb and three to explain the root caus- illness, and injury do well to bear in mind deaths, but this comparison is faulty. The es of darkness. Especially in a country of that, on any given day in America, the vast 37,195 vehicular deaths reported by the 300 million mostly innocuous guns and in majority of gun owners will not have any NCHS in 2014 are in the “unintentional” 50 million mostly normal, law-abiding gun- negative outcomes associated with their category. Only 461 firearms deaths in 2014 owning households, we do well to focus on guns. are categorized as unintentional. The over- the root causes of injury and death rather whelming majority of people who die from than a tool that has no life of its own. The best available estimates suggest that gunshot wounds are shot intentionally, by there are at least 300 million privately themselves or others. This intentionality owned guns in some 50 million households shifts attention to understanding how other in the U.S. today. According to the NCHS, in factors are necessary for guns to have a 2014 there were 11,008 homicides using lethal or injurious effect. I actually wrote firearms. Even using the faulty assumption this essay with a 9mm Glock 43 auto-pistol that a person from a different household sitting next to me just to verify that it is in committed every homicide using a different fact an inanimate object with no capacity to gun, at most 0.022% of gun-owning house- act on its own. Page 8 Medical Sociology Newsletter
Interview with a Scholar: Dr. Sandro Galea by Alaz Kilicaslan
I am thrilled to share the timely thoughts of Dr. Sandro Galea for our Winter newsletter. Dr. Galea is the Robert A. Know Professor and Dean at the Bos- ton University School of Public Health. As a physician and epidemiologist, his research examined many aspects of public health ranging from the social determinants of substance abuse to the effects of 9/11 on post-traumatic stress disorder. He also published several academic and opinion pieces on firearm-related violence, which he calls ‘a public health issue’. Dr. Galea was generous enough to invite me to his office and take time from his busy schedule for the interview. Below, he shares his views on why highlighting mental health is a distraction from understanding the real factors impacting the epidemic of gun-related harm, how sociologists can contribute to research addressing this deadly phenomenon, and how we should make sense of the absence of scientific research on gun violence, among other key issues.
K: With the recent cases of mass shootings, it looks like there is an emerging consensus around acknowledging gun violence as a major issue. But, there seems to be two camps, one focusing on the mental health and the other on gun laws. How do you evaluate this debate? Can we find a way to make these two camps speak to each other?
G: Mass shootings have been increasing and they got a lot of attention. But mass shootings account for less than one percent of all firearm casualties. So, they are important and they galvanize the public attention, but they are really a very small fraction of the consequences of guns. Most consequences of guns are actually suicides. Two-thirds of them are suicides and one-third are homicides. So, it’s important to talk about mass shootings, but we should also think about the broader issue. Overall, I think we spend a lot of time focusing on mass shootings but every day nearly a hundred people are injured by guns and that’s what we should keep in mind.
In terms of the issue of mental health, it is actually a red herring when it comes to guns. The only relevance of mental health to guns is mental health as a risk factor for self-harm, for suicide. But on the issue of homicides, be they individual homicides or mass violence, that’s a red herring. There is no evidence that mental illness makes people more likely to hurt other people. In fact, those with mental illness are more likely to be hurt by others. So, the discussion that is centered on mental illness has been a distraction from the core issue, and the core issue is guns. Core issue is that we have many more guns than anybody else in the world. We have nearly half of the all handguns in the world, although we are only about 4 percent of the world’s population. There are about 300 million handguns in this country. This means roughly one for every person, although they are really concentrated in the hands of about one-fifth of the population. So, the issue is guns; that guns are readily available, which means that people with intents to harm others have more readily available lethal means by which to harm others.
K: So, it’s not a real debate in that sense?
G: I don’t think there is a debate in data.
K: The President just raised this opinion…
G: The President is poorly informed. I think in part that is by intention, in that there has been a very concerted effort in this country to present the issue of firearms as a liberty and freedom issue masked behind the 2nd amendment. But in fact, that is a very narrow and particular interpretation of the 2nd amendment that has emerged only in the past 15-20 years based on a five to four party line vote in the Supreme Court that was based on efforts by groups sponsored by, fueled by the NRA to push very particular points of view. So, I actually think that this is a manufactured debate.
K: How do you make sense of the absence of research, or relative absence of research on gun violence in public health and other fields compared to other causes of mortality or morbidity?
G: I think it’s a direct result of the fact that there is less funding available to invest in research. I mean large-scale quantitative population health science research requires funding. And I think there is less funding available. It’s as simple as that.
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Interview with a Scholar: Dr. Sandro Galea by Alaz Kilicaslan
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K: Has this been changing recently?
G: Not really. Not since the new administration took over.
K: But do you hope it’s going to change in the future?
G: Well, I do. But, I think it’s going to take a change in administration.
K: How do you make sense of the relative absence of research on gun violence as a public health issue?
G: Actually, part of the reason why the debate I just discussed exists in the first place is the relative absence of research. You make sense of it because this is a direct response to the Dickey Amendment, which was an amendment that was attached to 1996 under the spending bill to CDC that prohibited CDC from being involved in advocacy around gun violence, but it was interpreted by CDC as a ban on them working on gun violence. And that has result- ed in much less data being available on gun related morbidity and mortality than all comparable causes of morbidity and mortality and that is a real problem. As a result, we have fewer data to inform the debate compared to what we should have.
K: What policies should be implemented to effectively address gun violence?
G: I think there is a full range of policies from enforcing universal bans to limiting high-performance weapons that have no purpose other than hurting and killing other people to ammunition checks to smart guns. I think all these policies can make a difference. Ultimately it is not going to be a single policy, it is going to be a mix of policies. There is not one miraculous policy in that sense.
K: How can sociologists and other social scientists contribute to such efforts and how can they collaborate with health professionals and policy makers?
G: You know, there is a real culture of guns. There is a real narrative that guns are about liberty and freedom. I think these are all issues that are in the realm of sociologists. I would encourage sociologists to engage and ask questions on how we can change the narrative on guns, how to change the narrative towards gun control and gun safety, ultimately how to save lives.
K: Of course I don’t expect a prophecy, but can you tell what the future holds for us in terms of gun violence and gun policy? G: I think the issue of gun-related injury is so egregious that the scales will tip. There is no question in my mind that eventually we’re going to come to our senses. We’re going to think it was embarrassing that we ever countenanced so much death and injury that was preventable. So, I think the history will judge us, and it will be unkind to those who did not speak up on this issue. So, I’m optimistic. Although, I think between here and the optimism, there stand a lot of people being injured and killed by guns. Volume 54, Issue 2 Page 10
Get Connected Simon Geletta & Natalie Ingraham [email protected] [email protected] Website Visits Over the last fall semester (i.e., between September 1 and November 30th, we observed a significant decline in the number of visits to our section website. You might remember that we reported a record post-migration quarterly visits during the summer session (353 visitors and 514 page views). This quarter our site received 205 visitors and 261 page views – a drop by 42% in terms of visitors and 49% in terms of page-views. The following graph shows the daily, weekly and monthly visit patterns during the reporting period.
Related reports also show that only 22 out of the 205 visitors were returning visitors the rest (about 89%), were new visitors. Therefore, it is reasonable to hy- pothesize that the declining trend may be indicative of the static nature of most of the content. We would like to reverse this trend by including more dynamic content. If you have ideas that would move our web platform in this direction please contact me through e-mail ([email protected]), so we can discuss solution ideas.
Figure 1: Active Users Report: September 1 thru November 30—with Monthly, Weekly, and Daily Visit Averages
Social Media Activities Our Facebook page now has over 2,000 followers. Our “reach” on each post remains stable from the fall update, with job postings getting the most attention. Our Twitter currently has 945 followers. Our LinkedIn group now has 428 members. If you haven’t connected with us on these platforms, please do!
Please contact Mel ([email protected]) if you have anything you’d like posted to our social media accounts!
A PUBLICATION OF THE MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY SECTION OF THE ASA
NEWSLETTER EDITORS: Ann V. Bell ([email protected]) & Barret Michalec ([email protected]) MEDICAL SOCI OLOGY SECTION OF THE ASA
Spring 2018
Volume 54, Issue 3 Medical Sociology Newsletter
Inside this issue: NOTES FROM THE CHAIR
Notes from the Chair 1 By Jane McLeod [email protected]
2018 Section Election 2 As I write, our annual meeting session organizers are finalizing their sessions Slate and ASA is beginning work on the Preliminary Schedule. Although almost five months away, Call for Reeder Award the annual meeting seems to be just around the corner! We will share details of this year’s 2 Nominations sessions in the summer newsletter. For now, please note that our section reception will be held on Saturday, August 11th, followed by our section day on Sunday, August 12th. If you can, plan Teaching 3 your travel so that you can join us for our section events. The sessions and receptions offer us the opportunity to see old friends, make new connections, and think collectively about how our Health Policy 3 research can contribute to reducing health inequalities and improving health care. In the interim, enjoy the range of columns and resources this issue features on the theme of Career & Employment 4 “Art in Health and Medicine.” Our newsletter editors, Barret Michalec and Ann Bell, have outdone themselves once again! Many thanks to all who contributed to this issue. Student News & Views 4
Guest Column: 5 Shelley L . Wall
Scholar Interview: 6 Ian Williams
Get Connected 7
A PUBLICATION OF THE MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY SECTION OF THE ASA
DON’T FORGET TO RENEW YOUR SECTION MEMBERSHIP IN THE MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY SECTION! Volume 54, Issue 3 Page 2
Section Slate of Candidates for 2018 Elections
Andrew London, Chair, Nominations Committee Nominations Committee: Jen’nan Read (Chair-Elect), Reanne Frank, Lindsay Stevens, & Adam Lippert Thanks are due to our terrific Committee and Chair for their hard work and to all who were willing to run for office.
Chair-Elect Health Policy & Research Committee Chair Deborah Carr, Boston University Joseph Harris, Boston University Robert Hummer, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Shannon Monnat, Syracuse University
Chair-Elect, Nominations Committee Council Member-at-Large Jennifer Karas Montez, Syracuse University Andre Christie-Mizell, Vanderbilt University Lijun Song, Vanderbilt University Patricia Rieker, Boston University
Student Member, Nominations Committee Student Council Member-at-Large Elizabeth Culatta, University of Georgia Aalap Bommaraju, University of Cincinnati Lauren Olsen, University of California San Diego Katherine Morris, Harvard University
Member, Nominations Committee (vote for 2) Membership Chair Courtney Boen, University of Pennsylvania Robyn Brown, University of Kentucky Matthew Dupre, Duke University Krystale Littlejohn, Occidental College Matthew Gayman, Georgia State University Tania Jenkins, Temple University Secretary/Treasurer –Elect Jason Rodriguez, University of Massachusetts-Boston Miranda Waggoner, Florida State University
SEEKING NOMINATIONS FOR 2019 REEDER AWARD Nominations are due by April1, 2018 The Medical Sociology Section invites nominations for the 2019 Leo G. Reeder Award, to be awarded at the annual meeting of the Medical Sociology Section in New York. This award is given annually for Distinguished Contributions to Medical Sociology. This award recognizes scholarly contributions, especially a body of work displaying an extended trajectory of productivity that has contributed to theory and research in medical sociology. The Reeder Award also acknowledges teaching, mentoring, and training, as well as service to the medical sociology community broadly defined. Please submit a letter of nomination, at least two other suggestions for nominators, and the nominee’s curriculum vitae to Brea Perry at [email protected] with the subject line: 2019 Reeder Award Nomination. Nominations are due by April 1, 2018. Note: If a person nominated for the Reeder Award is currently a member of the Medical Sociology Section Council, the nomination will be deferred until the person is no longer on the Council. Volume 54, Issue 3 Page 3
Teaching Ophra Leyser-Whalen & Adelle Monteblanco [email protected] [email protected]
Using Photovoice to Integrate both Art & Undergraduate Research into Your Course Bridging art and health may be as easy as integrating a classroom assignment that most Millennial and Generation Z-ers have plenty of experience with-- tak- ing a photo. This can be accomplished through photovoice, which is “an innovative participatory action research method based on health promotion principles and the theoretical literature on education for critical consciousness [and] feminist theory” (Wang 1999:185). As one helpful resource, PhotoVoice (http:// photovoice.org/), “promote[s] the ethical use of photography for positive social change” and its website features inspiring photovoice projects from around the globe on topics such as food security, housing rights, adoption, and climate change. This method is quite popular in a diversity of college classrooms because it offers instructors an authentic connection to students’ lives.
Here we offer a brief example of how photovoice was used in an upper-division “Social Determinants of Health” course at the University of Texas at El Paso. While the readings took a global approach to the social determinants that influence individual and population-level health, the photovoice assignment re- quired students to take photographs to illuminate numerous course themes (e.g., barriers to access and factors that contribute to health disparities). Students were able to capture aspects of their own experiences and visually share their lives with their peers.
Importantly, participating in a photovoice assignment meant that students were performing research through systematically investigating how social determi- nants play out in in their own lives and communities, i.e., the student-created data and knowledge. This, then, could be considered to be a Course-based Un- dergraduate Research Experience (CURE). Wang, C. C. (1999). Photovoice: A participatory action research strategy applied to women's health. Journal of Women's Health, 8(2), 185-192.
Health Policy & Research Thomas Mackie [email protected] For the 2018 ASA Annual Meeting, the Health Policy and Research Committee is co-sponsoring a workshop provided by the Scholars Strategy Network to assist sociologists in facilitating uptake of our research by policymakers and practitioners (details of time and location to come). Avi Green, Executive Director of the SSN, and I collaborated to provide the following three tips “to get research used by policymakers.”
1. Go off campus and build relationships. The best way for a policymaker or civic leader to learn of what you do is to for you to meet them in person on their turf. Get 15 minutes in their office or have coffee with them, briefly tell them about your work, and ask, "How can I help you?" Be open to the possibility that you will come away with new research questions.
2. If you read in the news that your issue is being debated, use the press to create relationships. When a policy debate hits the news, many of the relevant decision makers will have already decided what they think. Still, by working with journalists, you can inform the public and position yourself as an expert, increasing the likelihood you will be called by civic leaders earlier the next time around. If you observe that a policymaker is advancing an idea that is well-supported by research, credit the person by name when speaking to journalists. They will appreciate it!
3. Translate your evidence-informed perspective into clear, actionable recommendations. Researchers appreciate uncertainty and nuance, but policymakers need to make specific choices. When you speak to them avoid jargon, tell illustrative stories to make your points, and make specific recommendations. To learn more about the Scholars Strategy Network, visit their website at: http://www.scholars.org . VolumePage 4 51, Issue 2 Medical Sociology Newsletter
Career & Employment Katrina Kimport [email protected]
Art can help us see new perspectives. An even more salient reason for my love of art, though, is when I recognize something familiar or feel recognized by the painting, photograph, performance, text, or other media. Experiences with art can remind us we’re not as alone as we think. Based on my wholly non-scientific collection of accounts of being a graduate student, graduate school can be a lonely place. Academia as a whole doesn’t talk about this enough, but it can be debilitating.
The resource I offer in this newsletter is thus a Tumblr that depicts one person’s take on grad student life and some of its loneliness. In mid-2016, an unnamed graduate student had a particularly dispiriting meeting with his advisor. As he related in a December 2018 article in the San Francisco Chronicle (https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/Building-angst-Lego-Grad-Student-s-plastic-12416487.php), he realized after that meeting that he’d forgotten how to have fun. Graduate school had trained him out of hobbies and other “non-productive” recreational activ- ities. So he decided to return to an activity he loved in his childhood, but with a grown-up sensibility: he began building scenes from graduate student life out of Legos and posting them online (https://legogradstudent.tumblr.com/).
Take a look at them. They’re funny. They’re biting. And they’re very popular. Taking a moment to scan through the posts may make you feel recognized. Or it may help you see your graduate students with a different perspective. Or it may inspire you to pursue your own “non-productive” hobby. Or it may do none of these. Art, after all, is never all things to all people. But for the anonymous grad student at least, “playing” with Legos seems to be good for his health.
Student News & Views Alaz Kilicaslan [email protected]
For the Spring 2018 issue of the newsletter, I interviewed Dr. Ian Williams, a practicing GP, comic artist and writer from the United Kingdom, on his thoughts about the use of art in medical practice and education. Here are a few highlights of his views:
Engaging in art in clinical practice and medical education has a great potential to re-humanize medicine and to help health professionals reflect on and improve their practice. However, we’re still in early stages of this endeavor. Comics, which brings narrative and images together, is a particularly powerful form of art and tool in health activism in today’s visually oriented society. Medicine itself should be seen as a form of art. But, this craft-like dimension of clinical practice is under threat because of the increasing technicaliza- tion and bureaucratization of medicine.
In addition, I want to share a few webpages and articles that I find particularly relevant and briefly discuss how they illustrate Dr. Williams’ points.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-med-schools-requiring-art-classes is an opinion piece by Casey Lesser on how medical schools around the U.S. are increasingly incorporating arts and humanities into their curriculum to enhance future doctors’ observational skills, critical thinking, and empathy. Lesser, like Ian Williams, emphasizes the need for Western medicine ,and Western society more broadly, to open up to the perspectives of others and reconsider its own assumptions and discusses how art classes can play a role in this. At https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=oL1b1tMNI4E you can learn more about a class being held at Yale University’s Center for British Art as one of the pioneers of this trend.
In the interview, Dr. Williams likens ideal doctors to “shamans”, which are also known to be good “empaths” as they can put themselves to others’ shoes and feel what they experience. Dr. Meir Kryger’s article (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3365094/) discusses how Charles Dickens’ empathy and observational skills enabled him to draw detailed portraits of characters suffering from various health conditions. More than a hundred years later, doctors used his descriptions while coming up with the “Pickwickian syndrome” (today known as the obesity hypoventilation syndrome). Maybe the lesson to take from that is medicine has to learn from literature how to develop “narrative imagination”.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/04/09/397853271/an-artists-brainstorm-put-photos-on-those-faceless-ebola-suits is an ex- ample of how art can be used to address a practical real-world problem. At the peak of the Ebola Crisis in Liberia in 2014, artist Mary Beth Haffer- nan literally gave a human face to medicine: she suggested slapping a smiley photo of the healthcare workers on their protective suits so that pa- tients can “get a sense of the warm, friendly human underneath their suits”, and it has been a success.
If you have any comments on the interview or this column, or suggestions about what you would like to see in the Summer issue, please contact me at [email protected]. I am looking forward to incorporating your thoughts and experiences! Volume 51,54, Issue 23 Page 5
Guest Column: Shelley L. Wall, MScBMC, PhD Biomedical Communications Program, University of Toronto
Medical Illustration as Cultural Artifact
Visual imagery is everywhere in medicine and healthcare, from anatomical images used for study by medical students, to diagrams and data visualizations for research dissemination in peer-reviewed journals, to illustrations and animations that accompany patient education materials. Yet I suspect that few people give much thought to where those images come from, or how they shape our conceptions.
As a certified medical illustrator and a professor in a graduate medical illustration program at the University of Toronto, I often get blank looks when I explain what I do. “Don’t you just get all those pictures off the Web?” I was once asked, seriously, by a senior hospital administrator. More frequently, the question is “Can’t you just take a picture now?”
These kinds of questions seem to imply that 1) we are so immersed in the bath of visual imagery that washes over us each day that we don’t even think to ques- tion a didactic illustration as an artifact created by someone, and 2) that illustration is assumed to be a mechanical record of what is—a function now better per- formed by a camera.
Factual accuracy is, of course, essential in medical and scientific images, which is one reason this is a specialized branch of illustration pursued by people with both artistic skill and a thorough grounding in the life sciences, working in close collaboration with scientists and clinicians. In addition to accurate content, medical illustrations—especially the more complex ones—reflect a great deal of skilled narrative shaping on the part of their creators. A good illustration tells a story: an intraoperative photograph may furnish raw visual data about a surgical procedure, but a surgical illustration can clarify structures and anatomical rela- tionships, omit extraneous detail (all that blood, for instance), and suggest procedural sequence. Moreover, good illustrations are crafted with the needs of their target audience in mind: an illustration for use by surgical residents, for example, will differ not only in information content but also in manner of presentation to an illustration of the same procedure created for patients.
Medical illustrations perform much more than strictly denotative functions. Works of medical art are culturally embedded: they reflect the assumptions and aes- thetics of their place and time, and they circulate within specific communication contexts. That illustrative choices can have profound connotative implications was brought powerfully home to me when I was engaged to create patient education materials for the multidisciplinary urogenital clinic—known informally as the “intersex clinic”—at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. It was the early 2000s; intersex activism was gaining ground, but intersex issues (the term “disorders of sex development” had not yet been proposed) had nothing like the visibility they were later to attain. There were few resources available to explain prenatal sexual differentiation for the parents of children with atypical genital anatomy. We proposed to create educational illustrations and animations that would inform without stigmatizing. In doing preliminary research, and in reviewing the ways in which sexual differentiation is typically presented, I became aware of how normative assumptions can be embedded in the very structure of visual language. The “obvious” way to diagram sexual differentiation leads to a binary visual structure, with female anatomy on one side and male on the other, and only the space of abnormality, if not outright pathology, left for the representation of anatomy that falls somewhere else on the morphological spectrum. Stigmatizing implications were thus built right into the visual language. This project rein- forced, for me, the need to approach the design process with humility and with a willingness to question the assumptions (in this case about sex and gender, but the same goes for culture, age, ability, sexuality, race, socioeconomic norms—and the list goes on) underlying my design decisions.
This is only one small example, but the experience left a deep imprint on my practice and teaching. Medical illustrations are cultural artifacts; they communicate on many levels, both explicit and implicit. It is up to us, whether we create medical images, or simply use them for teaching and learning in healthcare, to be attuned to the many ways in which art can speak.
For more information on the Toronto Biomedical Communications (medical illustration) program, see www.bmc.med.utoronto.ca. For information on the profes- sion, and the other excellent educational programs at Johns Hopkins, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Augusta University, see ami.org. To see how we ad- dressed some of the issues mentioned here in the SickKids materials, please visit: http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/En/HowTheBodyWorks/ SexDevelopmentAnOverview/Pages/default.aspx
Post Notices on the ASA Medical Sociology Section List
Please note that the link to our website has changed from what it was (http://asanet.org/medicalsociology) to http://www.asanet.org/asa-communities/sections/medical-sociology Page 6 Medical Sociology Newsletter Interview with a Scholar: Ian Williams, MD In this issue of our newsletter focused on “art in health and medicine”, I am excited to share my interview with Dr. Ian Williams. Dr. Williams is a comic artist, printmaker, and writer, besides being a practicing GP in the United Kingdom. He is the founder and co-editor of the website Graphic Medicine (https://www.graphicmedicine.org/) and his first graphic novel The Bad Doctor (http://myriadeditions.com/books/the-bad-doctor/) was published in 2014. Dr. Williams also plays active roles in organizations aiming to promote critical dialogues between healthcare and arts/humanities by being a member of the advisory board for the International Health Humanities Network and a council member of the Association for Medical Humanities. Below, he discusses how art can be used in health activism, including the disability rights movement; why medicine should be seen as a form of art and how this is under threat; and how different art forms, and especially comics, can help health professionals to reflect on and improve their practice, among other key issues.
You are the author of the graphic novel The Bad Doctor and the founder of the website graphicmedicine.org Could you tell us what makes comics a particularly powerful resource for health professionals? My main interest is in illness narratives within comics, primarily autobiography. I think that comics work as a shortcut into the mind and life of the author, allowing the reader to experi- ence and feel what the author has been through. Comics are also very appealing, and more approachable, for some, than plain text. Ironic humor is traditional in autobiographical comics and this, too, can make the read more enjoyable. I would be much more likely to read a work like 'Cancer Made Me A Shallower Person' by Miriam Engelberg than a prose work about having a terminal cancer. As society becomes more visually orientated and moves away from text, comics fits with the redefinition of literacy.
How can art be used as a tool for health activism? More specifically, do you see any role it can play in the struggle for more equitable healthcare systems, including the demands for universal healthcare in the U.S.? Art has been used in activism for a long time. Classical paintings had a political and moral dimension, and the Dadaists and Surrealists harness the power of art to provoke and ques- tion the social norms of their time. Political cartooning has a long history and comics are an excellent way of getting over powerful narratives and arguments. I have to say that I feel that personal stories in graphic form are, for me, more powerful than polemic graphic essays or monologues. I live in the UK where we have the NHS which, for all its faults, is like a national religion. The principles are highly prized. When I read graphic novels about healthcare that are set in the US, one of the big points for me is how difficult it must be to navigate the insur- ance system (if you have it) at a time when you are ill. And what if you don't have it? It's crazy. I want to show these stories to politicians in the UK (privileged politicians, from wealthy backgrounds) who favor dismantling the NHS in favor of a US market-based system. One of the most exciting areas of activism, to my mind, is disability studies. When I first read about the principles of this field, it blew my mind. The social model of disability – that problems arise not because someone has an impairment that needs a cure but because society hasn't created the conditions that mean that impairment does not cause disability – turned medical thinking on its head. There is a growing number of people with disabilities amongst the graphic medicine community and I would like to see more disability activism comics. Made, of course, by people with disabilities.
Medical schools are increasingly adding arts and humanities to their curricula. Could you give us one specific example that you find particularly exciting? Do you have any potential (but no yet actualized) way art can be used in medical education in your mind? I think that making art, particularly if it has a narrative dimension, like comics does, is an excellent way of working out what one thinks about something, of reflecting on one's practice, training, etc. A liberal arts education rounds off a person, allowing them to think in ways that might escape the medical discourse with which healthcare workers are indoctrinated dur- ing their training. I think the value is mostly in the making of the art, and of the self-expression it brings. Viewing exhibitions of art by healthcare students or workers is rarely a gratifying experience be- cause any art does demand a degree of skill and dedication and an understanding of context, but the fact that they are making the art and understand the value of art, is encouraging in itself. Comics is a good way to involve healthcare workers in making art because the work can be good even when the drawing is bad. As Art Spiegelman says: 'in comics, good art is a bonus'. It is the story that is important. I did an MA in Medical Humanities and it changed my life. That was when I started writing about comics and set up the website. The course opened my eyes to the many discourses that flow in academia, and the many ways that people of different backgrounds see the world. The problem with medical education and medical culture is that it is so sure of itself in its technical, scientific, progress-orientated language, that if one is embedded within that community, one tends to forget that other viewpoints exist. I run comic workshops for medical students and doctors, and most attendees seem to enjoy them. Doctors don't like to be bad at anything, so they tend to worry that they can't draw, but once they get into the swing, they love it.
As also being a practicing GP, do you agree with the view that medicine is a form of art? Do you see an inherent tension between, on the one hand, the ‘art of medicine’ and, on the other, evidence-based medicine and standardization of healthcare? Definitely. That is what is so frustrating sometimes. Medicine becomes increasingly technical and relies on the strict application of protocols, and the lack of time and the increasingly high expectations from both above and below mean the shamanic side of the craft is squeezed out. Doctors have to defend it, insist on being cunning men and wise women and not allow scientism to take over. Evidence is only ever provisional and today’s best practice is tomorrow's flagrant negligence, but young doctors are not taught this. I favor a healthy skepti- cism. I try to believe as little as possible about anything. The shamanic side of practice comes with age and experience, and suffering of one's own. Older doctors are better at it, but unfortunately older doctors tend to burn out because of the insane workload.
There are growing calls and attempts worldwide to re-humanize medicine and establish more holistic models of healthcare delivery. What roles does art currently play in this endeavor and may play in the future? I think that a liberal arts education and an ongoing interest in literature, philosophy, and the arts is important for healthcare practitioners, unless, I guess, they are going to be cocooned in a laboratory staring down a microscope. Those interest and that education does not, however, guarantee a humane individual – Adolf Hitler was a painter and the art world, like any community, has its fair share of douche bags– but it does encourage a balanced, rounded worldview. I don't see a great deal of evidence in the UK that art is playing any great role in making healthcare more holistic, unless you call hanging pictures of pastoral scenes on the walls of radiotherapy units 'holistic'. I think the attitude of most policy makers is that art is a bolt-on luxury, secondary to the business of technical care. But, there are examples, here and there, of visionaries managing to get the arts into mainstream care. One example in the UK would be the incorporation of medical humanities into the mainstream curriculum of new medical schools. This feat would be nigh-on impossible for traditional, established schools. I think attitude is more important than education or interest and this is perhaps harder to foster, but pervasive attitudes within healthcare systems are very important because young doctors learn their moral codes from their elders. The House Of God demonstrated this admirably. I believe that doctors should be wise, and humane, and kind. As Kurt Vonnegut says: for God's sake, you've got to be KIND. We're all just trying to help each other find our way through this thing called life. And life is no way to treat an animal. Volume 54, Issue 3 Page 7
Get Connected Simon Geletta & Mel Jeske [email protected] [email protected]
Website Visits Between January 1 and March 23, our website was visited 273 times by 192 visitors. While this is an improvement over the last quarter’s report, it is still lower than what was reported for the same period last year. A look at the visit patterns (Figure 1) below shows that 92% of the site visitors are new visitors. As usual, our site keeps attracting younger and predominantly female audience (Figure 2). This quarter, we included affinity and interest categories of visitors. Interest categories were determined for 66% of the visitors and are reported on Figure 3.
Social Media Activities Our Facebook page now has over 2,100 followers. Our “reach” on each post remains stable from the winter update, with job postings getting the most attention. Our Twitter and LinkedIn groups remain stable, hovering ~950 and ~450 members respectively. If you haven’t connected with us on these platforms, please do! Please send us all opportunities related to medical sociology—we are happy to post faculty, post-doc, gov, etc. positions, and hope to extend our reach by advertising predoctoral fellowship and undergraduate opportunities
Please contact Mel ([email protected]) or send us a message on Facebook if you have anything you’d like posted to our social media accounts!
Figure 1: Website visits by the type of visitor (n=192) between January 1 and March 23, 2018 Figure 2: Demographic characteristics of visitors
Figure 3: What is of interest to visitors?
Don’t forget to check us out on: Facebook: MedicalSociologyASA Twitter: @MedicalSocASA MEDICAL SOCI OLOGY SECTION OF THE ASA
Summer 2018
Volume 54, Issue 4 Medical Sociology Newsletter
NOTES FROM THE CHAIR Inside this issue: By Jane McLeod [email protected] Notes from the Chair 1 The 2018 ASA Annual Meeting fast approaches: August 11-14, 2018 in Philadelphia, PA! Medical Sociology Section Day is Sunday, August 12th but section events and activities stretch Teaching 2 across almost the entire meeting. The preliminary ASA program is available online at: https:// convention2.allacademic.com/one/asa/asa18/. Career & This year’s official section activities begin with our section reception, Saturday, August 11th from 6:30-8:10pm 2 Employment (currently scheduled for Salon G, Level 5, in the Philadelphia Marriott), co-sponsored by the Society of Family Planning. Please come reconnect with old friends and greet new section members! Book raffle tickets will be Student Views 3-4 available for sale at the reception. On Sunday, August 12th, our section sessions include: Health Policy 5 8:30-9:30am Refereed Roundtables
Get Connected 5 9:30-10:10am Section Business Meeting (featuring our book raffle) 10:30am-12:10pm Health, Health Care, and Information Technologies More ASA meeting events 6 12:30-2:10pm Leo G. Reeder Address and Awards Ceremony, featuring an address by this year’s Reeder Award recipient, Paul Cleary. Interview with...the 2:30-4:10pm The Politics of Health 7 Newsletter Editors! Our sessions for Monday, August 13th are: 8:30-10:10am Sociology of Medical Education Part I Award Winners 8 2:30-4:10pm Race, Racism, and Health: Patterns and Processes
2018 Medical Sociology 4:30-6:10pm Sociological Research and the Reduction of Health Inequalities. 9 Election Results Many thanks to our session organizers (Matt Grace, Denise Anthony, Celeste Campos-Castillo, Sharon Preves, Tyson Brown, and Sirry Alang) for assembling such an outstanding set of papers! One of the great pleasures of serving as section chair is to observe the work of our awards committees. As always, each committee faced the difficult task of choosing recipients from among many deserving nominees. Award recipients are listed on page 8 in this newsletter. Special points of interest: TOUR the National Board of Medical Examiners—August 13 • Announcement of 2018 Medical Sociology Election Please join the Medical Sociology Section for a visit to the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) on Monday, Results—page 9 August 13th from 1-5:00 pm. Founded in 1915, the NBME is an independent, not-for-profit organization that serves the public through its high-quality assessments of healthcare professionals, including the United States Medical • A transition... Licensing Examination (USMLE). The visit will provide attendees with an opportunity to engage with NBME researchers active in the medical education and educational measurement communities and include a tour of the USMLE Step 2 Interviews with current Clinical Skills (CS) Philadelphia test center. Topics of discussion will include: physician wellness and burnout as they editors, Barret relate to high-stakes assessments, healthcare teams and how best to assess them, race and gender differences in USMLE performance, and measuring clinical skills through performance-based assessments using standardized Michalec & Ann V. Bell patients. The NBME is located at 3750 Market Street which is approximately 20 minutes from the Convention Center via the SEPTA Market-Frankford subway line. While there is no cost for the visit, participants will be asked to cover their Column by incoming own transportation expenses to and from the NBME (approximately $4 roundtrip via the subway). A meet-up location editor, Evan Roberts will be coordinated so that the group can travel together. Light refreshments will be served. Please contact Monica Cuddy ([email protected]) with any questions and to register for the visit. Volume 54, Issue 4 Page 2
Teaching Ophra Leyser-Whalen & Adelle Monteblanco [email protected] [email protected]
The modest direction from our esteemed editors, Ann and Barret, was to “have FUN” with our summer newsletter submission. Although fun too, we will take a pause from our usual focus on course-based undergraduate research experienc- es and share one easy way we incorporate fun into our medical sociology classroom.
Mister Rogers stated “play is serious learning” and we could not agree more. Play, at any level of instruction, can encourage a level of ease with complex material and the freedom for students to take risks in their thinking. Students assume such in-class activities are a break from studying, however structured play can reinforce learning and allow students to interact with difficult material from an unpre- dicted and valuable angle. We would like to share a teaching tool that students have described as effective, thoughtful, and fun. One popular classroom activity in medical sociology is to have students act out characters (e.g., one is a patient with a mortal diagno- sis, one is that person’s spouse, and one is the physician talking to them). As students enact this situation, anyone can “tap” a charac- ter out and jump in and take over that character. Such role playing enables students to use course knowledge that they have acquired and imagine what a patient, a spouse, or physician might be thinking and feeling. This adaptable teaching tool increases student oral participation while bridging the gap between lecture material and the real world. It also tends to attract some students who are not as inclined to participate in more traditional course activities. Nevertheless, student learning occurs through both participation in and observation of the role-play. Lastly, atypical teaching techniques need to be followed by critical reflection, and thus we end the class discussing topics such as how discomfort and fear, culture, and policies might influence patient-provider communication.
Don’t forget to check us out on:
Facebook: MedicalSociologyASA Twitter: @MedicalSocASA
Career & Employment Katrina Kimport [email protected]
This year at our annual meeting, ASA is experimenting with something new: a one-day symposium for sociologists working in practice settings. Entitled “Sociology in Practice Settings,” the symposium includes workshops and roundtables aimed at showcasing how practitioners are using sociological knowledge and skills to solve applied problems. All symposium events will take place Sunday, August 12. Sociologists working in practice settings and those considering such a position will have opportunities to build professional networks and gain insight into some of the ways practicing sociology happens outside of traditional academic venues. ASA has produced a video about the symposium: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8AEfEW_SZw. Of particular note for our section, I want to highlight a roundtable Judy Auerbach, Christine Morton, and I will be leading. While the program doesn’t allow for titles, we’re calling our session “Practicing Sociology in Biomedical Settings.” In it, we will identify contributions sociologists can make--as well as challenges they face--when working in multidisciplinary practice settings, such as organized research collaborations, non-profit organizations, and government agencies. We also will discuss strategies for navigating barriers to the inclusion of sociological perspectives in such multidisciplinary collaborations. By the end of the session, participants will be able to identify the theoretical and methodological skills they already bring to multidisciplinary collaborations from their sociolog- ical training, as well as others that they may wish to develop to optimize their success in such collaborations. Participants will have a realistic sense of what working in multidisciplinary practice settings means. The workshop has the support of the Medical Sociology section and has most direct relevance to re- searchers in health-related fields but the lessons of the workshop apply more broadly. Hope to see you there! VolumePage 3 51, Issue 2 Medical Sociology Newsletter
Student News & Views Alaz Kilicaslan [email protected]
For the Summer edition of the newsletter, I interviewed Associate Professor Alya Guseva and Assistant Professor Joseph Harris, both mem- bers of the Sociology faculty at Boston University. Aside from being colleagues in the same department, Dr. Guseva and Dr. Harris share three prominent characteristics: they have been teaching medical sociology courses for several years; they primarily identify with subfields other than medical sociology (economic sociology and political sociology, respectively) despite conducting research on medical institutions and practices; and their research is eminently transnational. Below, they discuss their current research agendas and transnational fieldwork experiences, and they give us tips for how to make our teaching better and more relevant for changing times and how medical sociology can contribute to policy debates. 1) Could you briefly tell us about yourself and your active research projects? Guseva: I have been trained as an economic sociologist, though medical sociology has always been a special interest of mine even before I started to regularly teach it. Until a few years ago my research and writing exclusively focused on studying consumer finance in the post-communist region. I wrote two books (one of them co-authored) and numerous articles on the emergence of markets for credit cards. Meanwhile, for more than 15 years, I have been developing a portfo- lio of classes on sociology of medicine, health, illness and healthcare, most of the seats filled by pre-medical and pre-health students. About 4 years ago I felt that I could finally change gears and start a new research agenda on markets for assistant reproductive services in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. I focus on surrogacy, and I have so far explored the provider side, collecting dozens of interviews with staff in fertility clinics, surrogacy agencies and with family lawyers.
Harris: My name is Joseph Harris, and I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University and co-founder (with Shiri Noy) of the Global Health and Development interest group within the ASA. I conduct comparative and historical research that sits at the intersection of sociology, political science, and public health. While my work takes up a number of themes and issues that are familiar to medical sociology (including research on the professions, health social movements, comparative healthcare systems) and has been inspired by the contributions of researchers like Eliot Freidson, Andrew Abbott, Phil Brown, Donald Light, and David Mechanic, I am particularly interested in the study of health policy in the developing world. At a time when the world’s wealthiest nations struggle to make healthcare and medicine available to everyone, my recent book – Achieving Access: Professional Movements and the Politics of Health Universalism (Cornell University Press, 2017) – examines how and why resource-constrained countries make costly commitments to universal health coverage and AIDS treatment after transitioning to democracy. In the book, drawing on existing concepts in medical sociology, I develop the concept of “professional movements.” Whereas mass movements are typically comprised of lay people, I draw out the way in which professional movements are composed of elites from esteemed professions who draw on knowledge, networks, and resources stemming from privileged posi- tions they hold that set them apart from ordinary citizens. In the domain of universal healthcare, professional movements of doctors draw on these resources to achieve reform on behalf of those in need in the face of opposition from the broader profession of which they are a part. In the domain of AIDS treatment, which lies at the intersection of human rights and intellectual property, lawyers play a central role. The book explores dynamics that made landmark policies possible in Thailand and Brazil but which have led to prolonged struggle and contestation in South Africa. But the concept has implications for many other policy do- mains and research areas in medical sociology and beyond. If my book explored the surprising policy commitments that resource-constrained countries sometimes make, then my current Fulbright-funded project examines the surprising influence of peripheral nations in the field of global health. Through a comparison of the processes that led Thailand to become a globally recognized actor in four key policy areas—global health diplomacy, universal coverage, health technology assessment, and tobacco control—I seek to understand how and why a country on the global periphery has produced policy models emulated by countries and organizations around the world and the mechanisms that have led those policies to travel abroad. In addition to these two projects, I am also working on a number of projects related to the emergent sociology of global health and the growth of global health research within American medical sociology and across the social science disciplines. It’s frequently mentioned that American medical sociology focuses primarily on health issues in the U.S. So we ask a number of relevant questions: well, is that true? If so, why is that? What’s going on there? And how does sociology’s relationship with global health research differ from that of other social science disciplines?
2) What role do you see medical sociology playing in public policy debates, and how would you like that role to be different? How can insights from the other subfields of sociology and other disciplines you are engaged in supplement medical sociology in this endeavor? Harris: I have a background in public policy and was recently invited to run for Chair of the Medical Sociology section’s Health Policy and Research Committee, so this is an issue that is really dear to me. Obviously, medical sociology as a subfield has made tremendous contributions in helping to understand health dis- parities, the social determinants of health and the social organization of healthcare, so medical sociology has so much to offer in terms of informing contempo- rary public policy debates! And researchers from the subfield are certainly playing a role in policy debates. But at a time when the role that evidence plays in public policy debates is sorely lacking, there is a need for medical sociologists to engage even more squarely in these debates. In other words, there is a need for those conducting “professional sociology” to step outside their comfort zones and contribute to “public sociology” as well, following Michael Burawoy’s call years ago. This is the only way we can succeed in changing the climate related to the role of evidence in public policy. I think we have to do much more in that regard than we have been doing. Con’t on page 4...
Post Notices on the ASA Medical Sociology Section List
...Con’t from page 3 I think the future of medical sociology depends on the subfield becoming more open to the insights and approaches that other sociological subfields (and other disciplines) have to offer, for example in the sociology of culture, the sociology of development, global and transnational sociology, political sociology, and compar- ative and historical sociology. This kind of cross-fertilization will open up new lines of inquiry and research pathways and help extend literatures that have stagnated in interesting new directions. In that regard, I was very gratified to see Terry McDonnell’s great book, Best Laid Plans: Cultural Entropy and the Unraveling of AIDS Media Campaigns, recognized with the Eliot Freidson Award this year. Contributions like this that draw on other fields, as my book does as well, shake things up and help the subfield to grow in new ways.
3) You both conduct research on transnational health care practices and institutions. What are some specific challenges that you have encountered and why is transnational research important?
Guseva: Transnational research is extremely important if we are to understand transnational phenomena. Reproductive markets in particular are rarely confined to national borders because legality of services, eligibility of different kinds of people to commission them and costs vary greatly, sending scores of potential parents sometimes to neighboring countries, but other times across the world. Providers •– fertility clinics and surrogacy agencies – often operate as global actors, too. And even surrogates and egg donors can sometimes travel. One of the challenges is deciding on the unit of analysis (is it a clinic, or a country, or a dyad of a sending and a receiving countries, or a cluster of clinic-agency-parents-surrogate mother?). The other challenge is the usual logistics of conducting research in multiple loca- tions, including the need to be multilingual.
Harris: I think one of the most difficult challenges that doesn’t get talked about enough is the long-term social isolation associated with the research process. And this is true whether you are conducting research transnationally or not. But when one is far away from home in a foreign environment, even if you know it well, these challenges can be magnified many times over, since some of the normal supports one relies on back home are just not there. And the stakes are incredibly high! If you think about it, the fate of interview-based research really hinges on the kindness of busy strangers who don’t have to give you the time of day if they don’t want to. And if they do, then you have to have further faith that they will tell you something that will be interesting and useful for your work. And this is without even getting into the issue of the tall tasks of processing and analyzing the data one collects, discovering the unique way in which it extends or challenges theory, actually doing the work required to produce a finished product, or finding a way to “sell” the insights of your work to a discipline that tends to focus much more on the United States. I honestly don’t know of any other profession that requires the people who work within it to have such a remarkable amount of belief in one’s self and faith in others than academic research. These are issues that should obviously be talked about more and addressed more explicitly starting in graduate school. It’s therefore critically important for transnational researchers to find ways to maintain balance and preserve your mental health when conducting research. For me, that’s always meant finding time to exercise, to do my work and the other things that are important to me, and to spend time with a community of friends. And to avail yourself of other resources if needed. You have to find ways to get the support you need.
4) Medical sociology classes are more prevalent than ever, partially thanks to the introduction of sociology questions into the MCAT exam. How can we improve our teaching and make it even more relevant for changing times and student interests/needs?
Guseva: Interest in medical sociology and sociology of health, illness and healthcare is at all times high. Our 80-seat introductory Sociology of Healthcare class is now offered twice a year and is usually overenrolled (this is the class that I started to teach in 2001 with barely 15 students). A large number of students in our intro- ductory sociology classes are also pursuing pre-med or pre-health tracks. I set two main goals when I teach: the first one is to provide students with a sociological toolbox that will make them critical observers of the healthcare field, more culturally competent, socially aware and compassionate providers, and/or more knowl- edgeable and empowered patients (a few, I am sure, will soon join the ranks of passionate healthcare reformers). The second goal is to be relevant and up-to-date. The healthcare field is as complex as it is fast-moving. In an effort to get students interested and accustomed to engaging with health news, a year ago my TF and I set up a group on Facebook, where students are required to periodically post analyses of recent health-related articles. What started as an assignment soon be- came an up-to-date collection of most interesting health-related articles and a forum for discussion. I now post, too, if I find something striking and want to share. The group’s collective wisdom helps me stay on top and keep the class current: I regularly learn about new developments or debates from my students’ posts and incorporate them into the lectures. Students, in turn, often follow up on the issues discussed in class with relevant news pieces, demonstrating their mastery in applying the sociological tools acquired in class. Many former students choose to stay in the group, so the number of members is constantly growing.
Harris: In a few words, make classes interactive and relevant. Show – don’t tell – students why and how concepts like the social determinants of health matter through great videos, engagements with compelling guest speakers, and interesting exercises that teach them new skills that they can apply in their future work and life, like op-ed writing. Don’t shy away from the hard or ugly truths of the American healthcare system and medicine as it is practiced now. Use those pieces to force students to reckon with and prepare for the difficult realities they will face in medical school and the healthcare field. Some students who don’t like what they see may decide to work to change the system, rather than go into medicine. Others will go into the field more prepared, with their eyes wide open and a more humble perspective about what they can accomplish, and with a much better handle on the sources, issues, and actors that they can draw on to ensure that they remain informed and humane physicians. I think it’s incumbent on people teaching these courses to make sure that students become aware of those resources.
Page 5 Medical Sociology Newsletter
Get Connected Simon Geletta & Mel Jeske [email protected] [email protected]
Website Visits Between the end of March and the beginning of the current month of June our website was visited 214 times by 193 visitors. The num- ber of visitors is almost the same as what was reported for the previous quarter (only one visitor more). Most visits occurred during the month of May. Most visitors came to our site through referral, or through organic search. Although most visitors are from the US, this quarter we had a substantial number of visitors from France. Other countries that contributed visitors to our site include the UK, India and the Philippines.
Updates to the website We have now created a space for section related news and events – called “Medical Sociology News & Events”. If you have any news that you think could be of interest to members, please forward them to me and I will publish them on that page. The best way to get materials to me is through e-mail ([email protected]).
Social Media Activities Our Facebook page now has 2,200 followers. Our recent Spring newsletter reached 500 people on Facebook. Our Twitter and LinkedIn groups remain stable, hovering ~950 and ~450 members respectively. If you haven’t connected with us on these platforms, please do so! Send us opportunities related to medical sociology—we are happy to post faculty, post-doc, and government positions, and hope to extend our reach by advertising predoctoral fellowship and under- graduate opportunities.
Please contact Mel ([email protected]) or send us a message on Facebook if you have anything you’d like posted to our social media accounts.
Additionally, we are looking for someone to take over social media postings. Please let us know if you are interested in taking on this role! Please contact Mel ([email protected]) or send us a message on Facebook if you have anything you’d like posted to our social media accounts!
Health Policy Thomas Mackie [email protected]
At a recent grantee meeting for the William T. Grant Foundation, the President of the Foundation, Adam Gamoran, and colleagues chal- lenged those of us in attendance to consider an alternative to the H-Index (an author-level metric to measure productivity and citation impact of publications) that was referred to as the S-Index. This thought experiment considered the S-Index as an author-level metric for the social impact of our work. In reflecting on this and how we might measure such a metric, participants discussed potentially relying on: • Content or software citation analyses deriving from multiple sources (e.g., professional publications, treatment guidelines and protocols, policy documents, Cochrane library) • Indexing of researcher-generated products for practitioners and/or policymakers (e.g., methods for assessment of implementation of care, instruments, healthcare technologies and services) • Assessment of dissemination and translation of findings (e.g., presentation for a non-scientific audiences, fact sheets, media engagement) • Memberships (e.g., member of committees issuing policy document or advisory committees) • Teaching (e.g., education of health professionals or policymakers based on research) While such a measure is provocative in the context of the extensive pressures already placed on students and faculty, I presume few would challenge the impera- tive to increase our “S-indexes” in the current political climate. In this spirit, the Health Policy and Research Committee is co-sponsoring a Policy Engagement Preconference at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown (303, Level 3) at the 113th ASA Annual Meeting to offer sociologists ways to increase the social impact of their research from 9AM-3:30PM on Friday August, 10, 2018. The pre-conference will be facilitated by the Scholar Strategy Network and provide the opportunity for scholars to learn how to navigate the policy process and assist you with the skills and strategies to make your research matter more to policymakers. Any ques- tions or thoughts, please email me at [email protected]. Volume 54, Issue 4 Page 6
More ASA annual meeting events of interest
You will find much medical sociology to enjoy beyond our official section sessions, including: Saturday, August 11th 10:30am-12:10pm Regular Session. Health and Mortality 2:30-4:10pm Section on Disability and Society. The Politics of Disabilities 2:30-4:10pm Regular Session. Biomedical Anxieties: AIDS Risk, Discrimination, and Healthcare Access 4:30-6:10pm Regular Session. Health and Well-being across the Life Course Sunday, August 12th 8:30-10:10am Regular Session. Reproductive Control and Decision-Making 8:30-10:10am Regular Session. Social Network Studies of Health and Well-being 10:30am-12:10pm Regular Session. Emerging Issues in Mental Health 2:30-4:10pm Sociology in Practice Settings Symposium: Roundtable on Leveraging Marginal Status as the Lone Social Scientist in the Room Where it Happens, featuring medical sociologists who work in practice settings 2:30-4:10pm Policy and Research Workshop. Workshop on Disability Measures and Data 2:30-4:10pm Regular Session. Disability and Society: Systemic Supports, Barriers, and Inequality Monday, August 13th 8:30-10:10am Regular Session. Neglected Topics in Mental Health Research 8:30-10:10am Regular Session. Health Care and Care Delivery 10:30am-12:10pm Regular Session. Medical Education: History, Status, and Reform 2:30-4:10pm Special Session. New Theoretical and Methodological Developments in Stigma 4:30-6:10pm Special Session. Reducing Stigma: Broadening our Approaches to Interventions 4:30-6:10pm Sociology of Population. Trends and Disparities in American Health and Mortality 4:30-6:10pm Regular Session. Health Policy Tuesday, August 14th 8:30-10:10am Sociology of Mental Health. The Sociological Study of Stress: Applications, Elaborations, and Critiques 10:30am-12:10pm Sociology of Population. Spatial Inequality in the United States: Emerging Health and Economic Disparities 10:30am-12:10pm Regular Session. Risk, Diagnosis, and Prognosis 10:30am-12:10pm Sociology of Mental Health. Is the Sociology of Mental Health at a Crossroads? 12:30-2:10pm Regular Session. Reproductive Bodies and Selves 12:30-2:10pm Regular Session. Care at the End of Life 2:30-4:10pm Sociology of Mental Health. Developing and Testing Creative Synergies between the Sociology of Mental Health and Organiza- tions, Occupations, and Work
DON’T FORGET TO RENEW YOUR SECTION MEMBERSHIP IN THE MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY SECTION! PLEASE KEEP SIGNING UP YOUR STUDENTS AND ENCOURAGING YOUR COLLEAGUES TO JOIN!
We were deeply saddened to learn of the recent death of R. Jay Turner, on May 12th after a brief illness. His son, J. Blake Turner, prepared this obituary which will appear also in Footnotes. http://www.asanet.org/asa-communities/sections/sites/medical-sociology/medical-sociology-news-events Page 7 Medical Sociology Newsletter
Interview with...the Newsletter Editors: Barret Michalec & Ann V. Bell As this is our FINAL issue after four years as co-editors of the Medical Sociology newsletter, we decided to interview each other in place of our “Interview with a Scholar” column. It has been a long, yet special journey editing the section’s newsletter. We feel very privileged to have been in this role. From topics on public sociology to environmental health to medical art, we hope you have enjoyed the diversity we tried to achieve in demonstrating the breadth and depth of our sub-field. We look forward to handing over the reigns to Evan Roberts as the new Editor of the newsletter. Thank you for the journey. We have certainly enjoyed the ride! Barret Michalec 1) Do you have a favorite issue from our editorial-ship? If so, which one and why? To answer this question and refresh my memory, I went back and reviewed all the issues we had completed. We tackled a lot of cool and important issues, topics, and perspectives. I’m actually really proud of us! I mean that. But to answer the question….yea, I’m not going to answer this properly, but there are parts of various issues that are my favorite. For many of the issues, we had to reach out to people and scholars that I admired and was basically in “awe” of and ask them to either be interviewed or write a guest column – and they always did it! No one ever said no – and that blows my mind and makes me feel like we all are inter- connected and most are interested in getting the word out about important issues. There was an advocacy angle to many of our issues and we approached those topics from an interdisciplinary frame/lens. So, I loved the issues where we “went there” but also engaged key figures/scholars in that arena. If I had to pick one issue though, it was the Spring 2018 issue on “Engaging Art (in various forms)”. Not only did it provide me an opportunity to connect with Shelley Wall and Ian Williams, but I also got to see how our sociology colleagues thought about this broad topic. However, the Winter 2015 issue will always have a special place in my heart because I remember you and I in a pub in London (co-directing the soc of health study abroad program) huddled over pints and your laptop working on it. 2) What are 3 "things" you'll take away from serving as an Editor of the Newsletter? a. If you want to connect with someone, regardless of their stature, rank, or public profile, you should reach out to them. What’s the worst that could happen? b. Deadlines are important and should be met c. Two heads are better than one. 3) As the new Associate Dean of Interprofessional Education what is/are projects you're working on that you're totally excited about? And, any new plans for this next phase? So right now I have three initiatives I am very excited about. I am working with Fred Hafferty, and a faculty member in the Art & Design school here at UD, and together were are exploring humanism in the premed realm through interviews with premeds but reporting our findings through a graphic novel. The initial find- ings are incredibly interesting and the preliminary art work that reports/showcases those findings is amazing At a recent symposium, we presented a poster depicting one particular theme and folks’ jaws dropped. We’re on to something here, something that I think has potential to impact the premed experience and med school admissions processes. As the AD of IPE, I created an Empathy & Affect Recognition class – funding for which was provided by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation (which has also helped to fund the graphic novel on premeds), and the Horn Program here at UD. Initially, the course was only offered to undergraduates in the health professions (e.g, premeds, nursing students, pre-PAs, pre-OTs, etc.) but we’re going to open up the course to include all students in hopes that students from the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences enroll. We pull from all those arenas in this course, so it would be outstanding to have all these types of students learning with, from, and about each other. And we just got a grant to offer the program at the graduate-level as well. Finally, in my administrative role, I am going to embark on a massive undertaking next year and make “moves” (i.e., financial-, curricular-, faculty-wise) to more explicitly and formally integrate the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences into STEMM majors. I’m done messing around with this, it’s time to make real change in the type of pre-professionals we are cultivating. Ann V. Bell 1) Do you have a favorite issue from our editorial-ship? If so, which one and why? Oh goodness, do I have to pick just one? As silly as it might sound, my favorite issue is our first issue, Fall 2014. There was a sense of pride in creating and con- structing this initial newsletter. Not only did we get thrust into an unknown world, but it was a world filled with fantastic scholars and interesting people. I will never forget sitting at the coffee shop in Trolley Square, selecting formatting, colors, and most importantly, content for the issues. We were able to design the newsletter so that it potentially reached more individuals via electronic sources. So, we began including the “Get Connected” column and had columnists cut down their entries so they would mirror blog posts rather than long essays. We also began thematic newsletter issues through the incorporation of the interview with a scholar and guest columnists which often (but not always) coordinated their topics. For instance, we pursued themes near and dear to my heart, including qualitative research in medical sociology (Winter 2015), the sociology of reproduction (Fall 2015), how to write a book proposal (Fall 2014), among others. 2) What are 3 "things" you'll take away from serving as an Editor of the Newsletter? a. that medical sociology is a thriving area of study with so much to offer (but, who didn’t know that already?) b. frequent reminders don’t always help c. It’s all in the details... 3) You just earned tenure and promotion - what is/are projects you're working on that you're totally excited about? And, any new plans for this next phase? Right now, I’m just ready to collapse and enjoy . But, in all honesty, of course I have a million projects in my mind that I’d love to start—studying reproductive health inequalities offers many opportunities. My pride and joy topic of infertility will always be a priority. I will continue to explore how individuals of various backgrounds (e.g., gender, sexuality, class, and race) experience the issue. I am also knee deep in my research on contraception, exploring the attitudes, behav- iors, and beliefs around the methods among women, their partners, and health care providers. Finally, I hope to engage in more interdisciplinary, collaborative work with colleagues across this campus and others. Volume 54, Issue 4 Page 8
CONGRATULATIONS to this year’s Award Winners!!! • Leo G. Reeder Award: Paul Cleary, Yale University
• Freidson Award: Terence McDonnell, University of Notre Dame, for his book entitled, “Best Laid Plans: Cultural Entropy and the Unraveling of AIDS Media Campaigns” (University of Chicago Press)
• Roberta G. Simmons Award: Lindsay Stevens, Rutgers University, “According to Plan?: Medicine, Culture, and Reproductive Planning in the United States”
• Honorable Mention: Matthew Grace, Hamilton College, “Fractures in the Medical Education Pipeline: The Social Determinants of Program Attrition among Early Career Premedical Students”
• Howard B. Kaplan Memorial Award: Wallis Adams, Northeastern University
• Donald W. Light Award: Jennifer Reich, University of Colorado-Denver, “Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines” (NYU Press)
• Louise Johnson Scholar: Lauren Olsen, University of California-San Diego
Welcome! New Newsletter Editor: Evan Roberts [email protected]
Hello! I am the incoming editor of the Section newsletter from Fall 2018, and looking forward to working with the section leadership and mem- bers for the next few years. I have been working in health research for 20 years, getting into the field working as a researcher at the New Zealand Ministry of Health and the Health Services Research Centre (Victoria University of Wellington) before I moved to the United States for graduate school. While in these jobs I was lucky to work on diverse projects including studies of asthma and primary care, evaluations of community mental health projects, and studies of hypertension and anti-depressant prescribing. For the last decade my work has been focused on health inequalities and health over the life course. My main focus has been a study of long-term health trends in New Zealand, with particular attention to the evolution of ethnic (indigenous and Euro- pean) health inequalities. As part of that research I am blending an epidemiological study of changing suicide risks among New Zealand veterans from World War I and II, with qualitative analysis of the narratives surviving family members and acquaintances used to explain suicide. My American-focused research uses histori- cal census records to examine early-life influences on later life health and mortality. Since 2015, I have led a citizen science project, Measuring the ANZACs (http://www.measuringtheanzacs.org/) to "crowd source" the transcription of New Zealand military personnel files from WWI. The focus of the transcription effort is on collecting health, medical, wounding, and demographic information from the files. Despite their age and distance these files have proved fantastic for teaching Sociology of Health to students in America today. Stay tuned for more on teaching with old medical files in future issues. I intend to follow the doctors and "first, do no harm" as I take over. One feature I want to introduce (with your help!) are conversations between post- docs or untenured faculty, with nearly-or-just retired scholars. This feature would rotate with the current interviews by graduate students. I welcome suggestions and contributions via old-fashioned email ([email protected]) or modern social media (@evanrobertsnz). Have a fantastic summer, and see you in Philadelphia.
DONATE to Medical Sociology Section’s Annual Book Raffle!!!
Please consider supporting the Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation in Medical Sociology award by donating a book to this year’s Annual Book Raffle. You may contribute any extra copies of your own book or other books, as long as they are current titles and not textbooks. These donations are going to a worthy cause – and you’ll want to buy raffle tickets at the meeting, as well! Please send your donated copies to:
Sara Rubin University of California-San Francisco Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences 3333 California Street, Suite 455 San Francisco, CA 94118
If you have any questions about potential donations, please contact Sara at [email protected] . Please send books by July 31st so they can be transported to the ASA meeting or email to arrange a hand-off in Philadelphia. Thank you for your generous support! VolumePage 9 51, Issue 2 Medical Sociology Newsletter
2018 Medical Sociology Election Results Chair-Elect (1-year term begins in 2018): Deborah Carr, Boston University
Secretary/Treasurer-Elect (3-year term begins in 2018): Miranda Waggoner, Florida State University
Council Members (2-year term begins in 2018): Patricia P. Rieker, Boston University
Student Council Members (2-year term begins in 2018): Aalap Bommaraju, University of Cincinnati
Health Policy and Research Committee Chair (2-year term begins in 2018): Shannon Monnat, Syracuse University
Membership Chair (2-year term begins in 2018) : Robyn Brown, University of Kentucky
Nominations Committee Chair-Elect (1-year term begins in 2018): Jennifer Karas Montez, Syracuse University
Nominations Committee (1-year term begins in 2018): Tania Jenkins, Temple University ; Courtney Boen, University of Pennsylvania
Nominations Committee, Student Member (1-year term begins in 2018) : Lauren Olsen, University of California San Diego
Bylaws Amendment: Passed
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!!!
THANKS TO CURRENT STUDENT EDITOR & CALL FOR NEW STUDENT EDITOR(S) Thanks are due to Alaz Kilicaslan at Boston University for innovative columns & insightful interviews with fascinating medical sociologists this past year in “Student News and Views.” We are now soliciting applications from graduate students to hold this position for 2018- 2019. The position increases your visibility to members of the section and offers an opportunity to share your ideas in the form of four columns in the newsletter. If you are interested in the position, please send an email to Evan Roberts, [email protected]. Please address the following questions in your email: 1. Why are you interested in this position? 2. What are some of your ideas for the “Student News and Views” column? 3. How might we increase student interest in the Medical Sociology Section?
A PUBLICATION OF THE MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY SECTION OF THE ASA
NEWSLETTER EDITORS: Ann V. Bell ([email protected]) & Barret Michalec ([email protected])
MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY NEWSLETTER ASA | Fall 2018 | Volume 55, Issue 1
Inside this issue: Notes from the Chair Brea Perry [email protected] Notes from the Chair 1-2
Section Awards 3-5 I am delighted and honored to serve as Chair National Board 6 of the Medical Sociology Section this year. of Medical Examiners First, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Jane Book Raffle 7 McLeod and Deb Umberson, outgoing Chair and Past Chair, respectively. Student section 8-9
Health Policy 10 I am fortunate to have Jane just down the hall from me, and she has been patiently answering all of my questions about chair-related Teaching 12 duties. Both Jane and Deb have been excellent stewards of the Career and 13 section, and have made my job infinitely easier as a result. Employment It was good to see many of you at the 2018 ASA annual meetings in Publications 14 August. Jane put together an interesting slate of sessions, and managed to organize a nice section reception and delicious awards Special points of dinner without breaking the bank (who knew a gallon of coffee interest: would cost $100 in Philadelphia?). Much appreciation goes out to our session organizers, Sirry Alang, Denise Anthony, Tyson Brown, • Interview with Reeder Celeste Campos-Castillo, and Sharon Preeves, and a special thanks winner, Paul Cleary, p.8 to Matt Grace for organizing the roundtables. The section is also grateful to Austin Johnson of the Sociology of Sex and Gender • Photos from this year’s section, who organized our joint session on gender and health. In ASA awards session and addition to session fare, we were treated to an excellent Reeder book raffle Award address by Paul Cleary. Congratulations to Paul and all the • Publication other section award winners! announcements from members Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 Notes from the Chair (continued)
I would like to extend thanks to our outgoing section council members, Deb Umberson, Rich Carpiano, Cirila Vasquez Guzman, Andrew London, Corinne Reczek, and Thomas Mackie. I am also indebted to Ann Bell and Barret Michalec, who have turned over the newsletter editorship after many years of truly outstanding service to the section. Evan Roberts has graciously agreed to take over this important job. This year we welcome new council members, Deborah Carr, Miranda Waggoner, Patricia Rieker, Aalap Bommaraju, Shannon Monnat, Jennifer Karas Montez, Robyn Brown, Courtney Boen, Tania Jenkins, and Lauren Olsen. I’m happy to report that Lilla Pivnick has agreed to stay on as manager of the listserv. Please direct any section-relevant announcements to her ([email protected]) or to me ([email protected]), and they will be included in the weekly email blast. Sara Rubin will also continue as Book Raffle Chair (more on that later).
I am already looking forward to the 2019 meetings in New York. In line with the theme of the conference (Engaging Social Justice for a Better World), Tiffany Joseph will organize a session entitled, “Health equity, social justice, and social movements.” In addition, we will host the second of two joint sessions this year with the Sociology of Sex and Gender section, which Corinne Reczek has kindly agreed to organize. Finally, I am very excited about a session Joanna Kempner will be organizing that is titled, “DIY Medicine: Hacking health, opting out, self-medicating, and consumer resistance.” We will also have a session for the award ceremony and Reeder Award address, and a session for the roundtables and business meeting. As I am writing this, we are only a few members short of reaching the 1,000 needed to earn an additional section. If we reach our goal, I’ll be announcing an another session soon. Thanks to everyone who submitted ideas for session topics. I wish we could accommodate all of them!
In other news, in light of increasingly high reception costs at the annual meetings, we will be exploring additional ways to raise money for the section. We have traditionally accomplished this through the book raffle, but it may be time to explore other possibilities. Sara Rubin and I will be leading the charge. If you have any ideas along these lines, please send them to Sara ([email protected]) or to me ([email protected]).
Thanks again for putting your confidence in me. I feel very lucky to be a member of this community of scholars, and I look forward to working with all of you over the next year. If you have any suggestions or comments about the section, please don’t hesitate to share them with me. Have a wonderful fall!
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 2 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 Wa l l i s Ad a m s w i n s Kaplan Memorial Award 2018 ASA Award Winners
Terence McDonnell wins Freidson Award!
The 2018 Eliot Freidson Outstanding Publication Award was awarded to a book published in the preceding two years. The committee received 21 excellent nominations, and reading the books, the committee was truly impressed with the breadth of cutting-edge scholarship being done in medical sociology, revealing the strength of the section.
The clear winner for the award was Terence McDonnell’s Best Laid Plans: Cultural Entropy and the Unraveling of AIDS Media Campaigns (published in 2016 by the University of Chicago Press). Best Laid Plans tells the story of three different AIDS campaigns and the ways in which they were creatively received by local Ghanaians in ways that challenged their intended purpose. His core theoretical contribution is the concept of “cultural entropy,” defined as the way in which the intended meanings of cultural The 2018 Howard Kaplan Awards objects “fracture into a chaos of alternative meanings,” impossible Committee was composed of to predict or contain. McDonnell offers practical suggestions to Richard Carpiano (Council the producers of AIDS campaigns–though entropy is inevitable, it Member-at-large, Chair) and can be managed and shaped to varying degrees and the Danielle Bessett (Treasurer). messages intended can be communicated more successfully. The committee felt strongly that McDonnell’s book offered We had four applicants for the tremendous insights and theoretical tools to medical sociologists, Kaplan Award. For the Howard but was also relevant and useful Kaplan Award, the committee beyond this case and beyond this s e l e c t e d W a l l i s A d a m s field. Committee members used (Northeastern University) 2018 t e r m s l i k e a “ s t a n d o u t recipient. contribution,” “engaging and persuasive,” and “original and Wallis Adams presented her novel” to describe the book. paper “Pockets of People: Congratulations Terry! Fo r e n s i c Pe e r S u p p o r t i n Pennsylvania” at this year’s I would like to thank my fellow Sociology of Mental Health committee members – Brea Perry, roundtables and received her Owen Whooley, and Daniel award at the Section Business Menchik – for their service to the Meeting. section by serving on this time- intensive committee. ~ Claire Decoteau
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 3 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 Lauren Olsen wins Louise Johnson Award 2018 ASA Award Winners
Lindsay Stevens wins Simmons Award
Committee: Richard Carpiano, Tania M. Jenkins, Hui Liu (Chair), Jane McLeod, & David Warner The Simmons Award received 8 nominations this year. After thorough review of each submission, the award committee selected the dissertation, “According to Plan?: Medicine, Culture, and Reproductive Planning in the United States” by Lindsay Stevens as the winner of the 2018 Simmons Award. This dissertation advances our understanding of the “planned pregnancy” as a contemporary medical and social phenomenon and makes an important contribution to medical sociology, inequalities, gender, and race and ethnicity. It uses an intersectional lens to understand how inequality is produced by and embedded in interrelated arenas: medicine and health policy, the environment, embodiment, and science, knowledge and technology. Stevens masterfully analyzed multiple sources of data to examine the inequality at multiple levels of the processes surrounding pregnancy The 2018 Louise Johnson planning. Specifically, she documents how the concept of “pregnancy A w a r d s C o m m i t t e e w a s planning” often gets deployed in ways that value the reproduction of composed of Richard Carpiano privileged women, devalue that of marginalized women, and (Council Member-at-large, perpetuate existing inequalities. Her analytic methods range from Chair) and Danielle Bessett content analysis, ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews. (Treasurer). Her example paper derived We had seven applicants for the from this dissertation is J o h n s o n A w a r d . Fo r t h e published in Social Science & Johnson Award, the committee Medicine. The paper is clearly s e l e c t e d L a u r e n O l s e n written, well integrated with (University of California, San p r e v i o u s l i t e r a t u r e a n d Diego) who presented her theories. The committee paper “Emotionally Taxing and believes that this innovative Unpaid: The Costs of Racial dissertation makes important Instruction in U.S. Medical t h e o r e t i c a l a n d S c h o o l s ” a t t h e M e d i c a l methodological contributions Sociology Section Session to medical sociology and will “ S o c i o l o g y o f M e d i c a l have a high impact on the field. Education,” and received her award at the Section Business Meeting.
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 4 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 Matthew Grace: 2018 ASA Award Winners Honorable Mention for Simmons Award Jennifer Reich wins Donald W. Light Award
This award aims to highlight and inspire the work of the many sociologists who apply their concepts and skills to “politically or ethically important challenges in health, health care, and health care policy at the national or international level.” It is the only section award that pays for itself, because it generates a solid income on its endowment. The award resonates with Michael Burawoy’s historical analysis of public sociology1 and sociology as a vocation2 that engages in value-committed sociology.3 As I wrote in Social Forces over a decade ago,4 public sociology can make original contributions to research and theory as it reframes a issue, demythologizes elite accounts, or contributes to foundational knowledge about social justice.
This year’s winning book was selected by Debra Umberson from the University of Texas at Austin (chair), Erik Wright from Wisconsin and The Simmons Award committee (Chair: Hui Liu) also decided to past-president of the ASA, Helen Marrow from Tufts University, Tom give an honorable mention to Mackie from Rutgers University, and Cirila Estela Vasquez Guzma from Matthew K. Grace’s dissertation, the University of New Mexico. The Award Committee selectedCalling titled “Fractures in the Medical the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines, by Jennifer A. Reich and Education Pipeline: The Social published by the New York University Press in 2016. D e t e r m i n a n t s o f Pro g ra m Attrition among Early Career ~ Donald W. Light Premedical Students”, given its high-quality work and potential c o n t r i b u t i o n s t o m e d i c a l sociology.
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 5 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 ASA 2018
Section members visit National Board of Medical Examiners
As part of the recent ASA annual meeting, the Medical Sociology Section and Medical Education Interest Group sponsored a visit to the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). During the visit, twenty-five sociologists from diverse institutions attended presentations by NBME researchers, toured the USMLE Step 2 Clinical Skills (CS) Philadelphia test center, and observed a mock Step 2 CS standardized patient encounter. Participants engaged in thoughtful discussions focused on such topics as race and gender differences in medical licensure examination scores, wellness and burnout among medical students and physicians, and the history and development of the performance-based component of USMLE. The visit was extremely well received and generated an exciting and robust dialogue around shared interests from varied perspectives. Lots of fodder for future conversations! Please contact Monica Cuddy at [email protected] with any questions you have about the visit or the NBME.
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 6 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 ASA 2018 Book Rafe
The annual book raffle raised an impressive $500 for the Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation in Medical Sociology award. The success of the raffle would not have been possible without the generous donations of a record 44 books from 10 individuals and 6 publishers, as well as the countless section members who purchased raffle tickets at the conference. Many thanks to all of those who contributed in one form or another to a triumphant year of the Medical Sociology Section Book Raffle. Special recognition is due to Miranda Waggoner, Laura Mauldin, Alondra Nelson, Howard Waitzkin, Brea Perry, Carol Estes, Janet Shim, Susan Bell, Adele Clarke, and Joanna Kempner for collectively donating so many great titles. University of Minnesota Press, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Sage Publishing, Cornell University Press, University of Chicago Press, and Yale University Press also made extremely generous contributions to the raffle this year, and we are thankful for their support.
While the book raffle has been a celebrated event at the conference for nearly a decade, many section members have expressed the desire to retire this tradition in hopes of identifying a new way of raising funds for this award. As book raffle chair, I am eager to hear any thoughts that you might have about how we as a section might go about raising these funds without relying so heavily upon the generosity of council members, who typically bear the brunt of the responsibility when it comes to both donating (and shipping) books as well as purchasing raffle tickets. Thanks to all of those who have supported the raffle over the years —looking forward to forging new traditions in 2019! –Sara Rubin ([email protected])
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 7 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 Student section
Interview with 2018 Leo G. Reeder Award winner Paul Cleary
We are Alexandra Brewer (left) and Meredith Van Natta (right), and we want to introduce ourselves as the new student editors of the Medical Sociology Newsletter. Alexandra is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Chicago, and Meredith is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California San Francisco.
Our goal with the student section of the newsletter is to interview eminent scholars of medical sociology and share their wisdom about research, public engagement, and navigating the early stages of an academic career. For our inaugural piece, we conducted an interview with Professor Paul Cleary, the winner of the 2018 Leo G. Reeder Award for a Distinguished Career in Medical Sociology.
Professor Cleary has researched HIV/AIDS since the 1980s and has worked closely with researchers from a variety of fields and disciplines. We wanted to know what he sees as sociology’s unique role in interdisciplinary health research and how sociologists might communicate this to researchers outside of their field. “I can’t think of an issue in health behavior, health prevention, or health care that shouldn’t involve sociologists,” remarked Professor Cleary. “There are enormous contributions for medical sociologists to make… I’ve always found clinicians, politicians, administrators, and health service workers to be extremely interested.” He added, “They want the patient to get better. If you have some insights that may help an on-the-margin patient to do better, that’s all they care about. That’s very, very attractive to them.” (continued overleaf)
Paul Cleary (back center, in front of art work) had lunch with a group of Medical Sociology section graduate students at the ASA meetings in August.
Photo kindly supplied by Estela Vasquez Guzman
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 8 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 Student section
Additionally, we asked Professor Cleary to tell us the best advice he ever got from a faculty mentor and whether he would offer this same advice to students today. He praised his first faculty mentor, David Mechanic, calling him “the gold standard of scholarship and mentorship.” He said the best advice he received as a graduate student was, “Really focus on an area that took passion and develop it in depth. That may sound obvious, but there’s many forces that work against that.” Now that he has served in the role of graduate mentor himself, Professor Cleary says about his orientation to his students’ careers, “My goal is to advance your scholarship. I want you to drop any of these projects that are not c o n t r i b u t i n g t o y o u r i n t e l l e c t u a l development and focus on things that are.”
To conclude the interview, we asked Professor Cleary how a graduate student might find mentors to help them in these ways. He encouraged students to focus less on how famous their potential mentor might be and more on personality fit. “If a person doesn’t have your priorities among their top Jane McLeod (2017-18 Section Chair. Indiana priorities, it doesn’t matter how many University), Paul Cleary (Reeder award winner, contacts they have. They can have twice as Yale), and Allan Horwitz (Rutgers University) at many contacts as the person next to them, the Medical Sociology section awards but if that person next to them thinks about presentation in Philadelphia, August 2018. you and your career and wants you to advance, they’re going to be a better mentor.”
In the next issue of the medical sociology newsletter, we will be interviewing another of this year’s ASA medical sociology award winters. Stay tuned!
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 9 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 Health Policy
Why the Senate’s Opioid Crisis Response Act Won’t Fix our Problem
Since 1999, over 600,000 people in the U.S. have died from drug overdoses, with opioids leading the way. Despite substantial media and political attention and increased spending to combat this crisis, the death rate continues to surge. So far, policy strategies to address the opioid problem have focused almost exclusively on opioid supply reduction and treatment interventions rather than addressing the underlying social problems that got us into this mess. And now, the Opioid Crisis Response Act (OCRA) of 2018 passed by the Senate in September offers us more of the same.
OCRA is dominated by many of the same failed supply-side strategies of the past and by a medical treatment model that Shannon Monnat emphasizes increasing funding for new pain drugs and increasing (@smonnat) is the Lerner access to substance abuse treatment and to the opioid agnostic – Chair of Public Health Naloxone (commonly sold under the brand name Narcan). The Promotion and Urban Institute reports that between 2011 and 2016, Medicaid Associate Professor of spent over $3.5 billion on medication assisted treatment for Sociology at Syracuse opioids, and that’s only a start. University.
The cost of medical treatment for opioid use disorders over the next 10 years could be as high as $180 billion. OCRA allows NIH to use its “other transactions authority” for high impact cutting-edge research projects to find new pharmaceutical solutions for pain relief and the treatment of opioid use disorders. At best, big pharma was complicit in the opioid overdose surge. At worst, they deserve the lion’s share of responsibility for heavily marketing to and misleading physicians and the public about a product that was so easily abused. But under OCRA, the quick-fix medical model prevails, and big pharma will be handsomely rewarded for a problem it sparked.
To be sure, getting more people who need it into treatment and making Narcan universally available will save lives. But, we need to get real with ourselves about the U.S. drug problem. We are not going to Narcan our way out of this. We are not going to treat our way out of this. The problem is bigger than opioids. The problem is bigger than drugs, altogether. Opioids are a symptom of much larger social and economic problems. Opioids may have been the spark, but a spark needs kindling in order to ignite. This kindling, comprehensively described in must-read books by journalists Sam Quinones and Brian Alexander and by VCU sociologist Victor Tan Chen is the result of decades of economic restructuring, rising income inequality, social disconnection and loss of social cohesion, and a neoliberal policy regime that emphasizes the market and maximizing shareholder value over collective societal well-being.
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 10 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 Health Policy
Why the Senate’s Opioid Crisis Response Act Won’t Fix our Problem
Public health experts are increasingly conveying the message that addiction should be viewed as a medical disease, just as we view other chronic diseases. If we accept that, then we must also accept that, just as other chronic diseases have underlying social determinants, addiction is also a social disease. “Addiction doesn’t discriminate” is a soundbite that ignores the reality that overdose rates are highest in economically distressed communities, particularly places that have experienced declines in job opportunities for people without a college degree.
But economic decline is not the only factor driving our opioid problem. It is also deeply related to neoliberal social decline – an era of individualism and personal responsibility, disinvestment in social safety nets and social infrastructure, and increased loneliness. A new report by the American Psychological Association shows that stress in America is at its highest level since polling began. How is this connected to opioids? Research by Brookings economist Carol Graham shows that people who are hopeful and optimistic about the future are more likely to invest in their future and have better health outcomes, whereas those consumed with stress are less confident that such investments will pay off and are more likely to engage in health-harming behaviors. Importantly, she shows that 62% of Americans now believe their children will be worse off than they are, and optimism among working-class whites (the group with the highest opioid overdose rate) began to fall in the 1970s!
As the American Dream has eroded into a system where winners win big but losers fall hard, it is no wonder that people are seeking escape. But drugs aren’t the only escape. In fact, they’re not even the most common escape. High calorie foods, smoking, and alcohol also offer temporary vacations from grief and despair, and they remain the three leading preventable causes of death in the U.S. Suicide – the permanent escape – is also on the rise.
OCRA barely acknowledges the broad social and economic problems underlying the nation’s opioid crisis. These same big problems drove the crack epidemic in the 1980s and the meth epidemic in the 1990s and 2000s. History tells us that once opioids have left the scene, another drug will come along, and there will be a new drug war to fight. One of the biggest problem with U.S. public health policy is that we invest most of our resources in tackling problems after they emerge rather than investing in preventing them to begin with. OCRA disproportionately targets downstream mechanisms, while upstream strategies that promote opportunities for people to live happy and healthy lives have largely been ignored. Relegating prevention to a secondary status while we try to get a tourniquet on what many view as the pressing matter (the rising death toll) will ensure only that we need more tourniquets.
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 11 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 Teaching Promoting Student-created Videos
Welcome to the fall semester! We are eager to continue our conversation on CUREs (course- based undergraduate research experiences) in the sociology classroom.
One of the fundamental skills that CUREs strengthen is oral communication. CUREs often develop oral communication skills through in-class poster and PowerPoint presentations—assignments that often generate anxiety. In our spring 2018 course, we asked students to create videos with a webcam or other recording device in a location of their choosing and edit the video after the fact.
We worked closely with UTEP’s Academic Technologies division. Instructors met one-on-one with instructional technology experts, and the Associate Director of Academic Technologies, Steve Varela, gave a Adelle Monteblanco presentation to the students, along with a handout on creating an effective [email protected] video.
To assess this new assignment, we invited students to participate in a UTEP IRB-approved focus group. A few important themes emerged:
1.Making, editing, and uploading a video were not skills that all students already had. This challenged our assumptions about the tech-savviness of Generation Z and millennial students.
2.Students recognize video making as a valuable skill to develop for other courses and their career.
3.No students used UTEP resources (such as labs) for video making and editing. This may be partly because UTEP is a Ophra Leyser-Whalen commuter campus. [email protected]
4.Students said they would have preferred an in-class oral presentation (largely because they felt the video project took more preparation time than an in-class presentation).
We found that presentation grades improved from the previous semester, when students did the same assignment with an in-class presentation. On average, evaluated dimensions such as “flow” and “timing,” scored considerably higher in the recorded presentations. We believe that grades improved because students could edit their videos and instructors could turn up the video volume or rewind when necessary. We hope that in the future students will be glad they developed these new skills, despite the time it took, but following up with these students will be the most telling.
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 12 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 Career and Employment
The academic job market is a funny thing. Let’s just pause and remind ourselves of that for a moment: applicants, typically graduate students, submit substantial packets of information for not just one or a handful but often dozens of positions— positions that will not commence for nearly a year. During that year, dissertations will be finished, papers published, and maybe even a thing or two in applicants’ personal lives will take place. To all applicants currently navigating the system: it’s not you, the system is strange.
Of course, the conventions of the academic hiring system have reasons and histories behind them, but it behooves us all to step back and evaluate this system at a macro level. As Lauren Rivera’s December 2017 American Sociological Review article demonstrates, the current system may exacerbate labor market inequalities and hamper faculty diversity. Using ethnographic methods, Rivera observed three hiring committees, one in the humanities, one in social sciences, and Katrina Kimport one in physical sciences, for a full hiring cycle. [email protected]
She finds unrecognized discrimination against partnered heterosexual women, undergirded not only by cultural stereotypes, but also through organizational practices, including the quantity of committee member time investment the system demands, the risk of losing a hiring line if the first offer is not accepted, and the lack of institutional policies around partner employment. Rivera’s sample was small; other forms of unrecognized discrimination likely operate in other hiring committees. We have to do better. To everyone in a position to hire: reading and sharing Rivera’s article is a good first step.
Featured publication announcement
This publication from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine summarizes a workshop (organized by several section members) that was convened in March 2018 to help inform research, programs, and policies to better meet the mental health needs of women in the United States. Participants examined trends in mental health as well as risk and protective factors for diverse populations of women, and they considered the research needed for a better understanding of women’s mental health. Important issues of practice and policy also were discussed. Experts explored these topics from a life-course perspective and at biological, behavioral, social/ cultural, and societal levels of analysis. ~ Debra Umberson ([email protected])
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 13 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 From the editor Publication announcements
Barbee, Harry, Mairead Eastin Moloney, and Thomas R. Konrad. 2018. "Selling Slumber: American Neoliberalism and the Medicalization of Sleeplessness." Sociology Compass. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12622
Barkan, Steven E., and Michael Rocque. "Socioeconomic status and racism as fundamental causes of street Evan Roberts, University of Minnesota criminality." Critical criminology 26, no. 2 (2018): 211-231.
[email protected] @evanrobertsnz Brown, Tyson H. 2018. “Racial Stratification, Immigration, Welcome to the first issue of the 2018/19 Medical and Health Inequality: A Life Course-Intersectional Sociology newsletters. The volume numbers alone Approach.” Social Forces, 96(4):1507-1540. (55!) show what a long history we have. In Brown, Tyson H. and Taylor W. Hargrove. 2018. preparation for taking over this role I reviewed the “Psychosocial Mechanisms Underlying Older Black Men’s archives that were online, which date to 2006. We have a long history, and as someone whose Health.” Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological interests are historical I would love to connect with Sciences and Social Sciences, 73(2):188-197. members who have paper copies of older issues, Chiarello, E. and Morrill, C. (In Press). “A MultiField Logics to see if we can scan these and make them easily Approach to Theorizing Relationships Between Healthcare available. and Criminal Justice.” Ed. Anna Kirkland and Marie-Andrée Jacob. Research Handbook on Law, Medicine and Society. A newsletter is a space for section members to Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. communicate and connect. I thank all the contributors to this issue for their contributions. A Cottingham, Marci D., Julianne M. Kalbaugh, Teresa new (renewed?) feature is a column of publication Swezey, and Jill A. Fisher. “Exceptional Risk: Healthy announcements, which members have contributed. Volunteers’ Perceptions of HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials.” The goal of this section is to highlight publications Forthcoming. JAIDS: Journal of Acquired Immune that may be harder to find, so in this issue which is Deficiency Syndromes (IF: 3.935). Preprinted: In C. Ollivier already quite long, we are not featuring articles in Yaniv & M. Couderc (Eds.), 2018. Recrutement-Engagement Journal of Health and Social Behavior and dans des Essais Cliniques en Prevention: Contextes, Sociology of Health and Illness which I trust you are Logiques Sociales et Mediations (pp. 5770). all reading avidly and regularly. http://www.anrs.fr/sites/default/files/201804/ volontaires_etudes_cliniques_prevention.pdf I would like to introduce to the newsletter a feature of post-docs and assistant professors interviewing Cottingham, Marci D., Austin H. Johnson, and Rebecca J. colleagues nearer the end of their careers. If you Erickson. “‘I Can Never Be Too Comfortable’: Race, Gender, would like to volunteer on either end of the age and Emotion at the Hospital Bedside.” Qualitative Health distribution, please be in touch. Best wishes for fall. Research 28(1): 145-158.(IF: 2.036) https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1049732317737980
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 14 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 Publication announcements
Erving, Christy L. 2018. “Physical-Psychiatric Comorbidity: Patterns and Explanations for Ethnic Group Differences.” Ethnicity & Health 23(6): 583-610.
Erving, Christy L. and Courtney S. Thomas. 2018. “Race, Emotional Reliance, and Mental Health.” Society and Mental Health 8(1):69-83.
Erving, Christy L. 2018. “Ethnic and Nativity Differences in the Social Support-Physical Health Association among Black Americans.” Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 20(1): 124-139.
Hamilton, Erin R., Jo Mhairi Hale, and Robin L. Savinar. "Immigrant Legal Status and Health: Legal Status Disparities in Chronic Conditions and Musculoskeletal Pain among MexicanBorn Farm Workers in the U.S." Demography. Forthcoming. See a blog post on this paper here: https://agcenter.ucdavis.edu/blog/new-study-reports-differences- physical-health-us-farm-workers-legal-status/
Kitts, James A., Alessandro Lomi, Daniele Mascia, Francesca Pallotti, and Eric Quintane. "Investigating the Temporal Dynamics of Interorganizational Exchange: Patient Transfers among Italian Hospitals." American Journal of Sociology 123, no. 3 (2017): 850-910.
Malcolm, R., Ecks, S. and Pickersgill, M. (in press) ‘“It just opens up their world”: autism, empathy, and the therapeutic effects of equine interactions’, Anthropology & Medicine.
Morris, Theresa. Healthcare in Crisis: Hospitals, Nurses, and the Consequences of Policy Change. NYU Press, 2018.
Newhart, Michelle and William Dolphin. The Medicalization of Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma, and the Patient Experience. Routledge. 2018. "This is the first comprehensive look at what it means to participate in a regulated state medical marijuana program, from talking to doctors and establishing treatment regimens to managing risk and navigating stigma and stereotype. Anchored by key sociological theories and concepts, this book is based on qualitative research that included in-depth interviews with 40 mid- life patients enrolled in Colorado’s medical marijuana program, observation over a two- year period, and unstructured interviews with key actors in the medical cannabis industry.”
Peneff, Jean (translated by Robert Dingwall), Howard Becker: Sociology and Music in the Chicago School, Routledge, 2018.
Pickersgill, M. (2018) "The value of the imagined biological in policy and society: somaticizing and economizing British subject(ivitie)s", in: Gibbon, S., Prainsack, B., Hilgartner, S. and Lamoreaux, J. (eds.) Handbook of Genomics, Health and Society, London: Routledge, pp. 99-107.
Pickersgill, M., Chan, S., Haddow, G., Laurie, G., Sridhar, D., Sturdy, S. and Cunningham-Burley, S. (2018) "The Social Sciences, Humanities, and Health", The Lancet, 391, 10129, 1462-1463.
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 15 Fall 2018 Volume 55, Issue 1 Publication announcements
Shasteen, Julie. “A Doctor Is Less Valuable Than a Working Truck”: A Phenomenological Study Exploring International Immersion Experiences of Primary Care Physicians Trained in the U.S. Dissertation completed at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, 2017.
Stablein, Timothy, Keith J. Loud, Christopher DiCapua, and Denise L. Anthony. 2018. "The Catch to Confidentiality: The Use of Electronic Health Records in Adolescent Health Care." Journal of Adolescent Health 62:577-582. https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054139X(17)308686/abstract
Walker, Rebecca, Marci D. Cottingham, and Jill A. Fisher. “Serial Participation and the Ethics of Phase 1 Healthy Volunteer Research.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 43: 83–114 (IF: 0.871) https://academic.oup.com/jmp/article/43/1/83/4803095
Xu, Hongwei. "Physical and mental health of Chinese grandparents caring for grandchildren and great grandparents." Social Science and Medicine. 2018 May 26. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.05.047.
The ASA meetings in Philadelphia were held near Wanamaker’s downtown department store (now a Macy’s). Wanamaker, like several other early twentieth century department store owners employed, physicians and nurses for his employees, and offered limited sickness benefits to his employees. The Philadelphia store also had a nursing station for customers who needed medical attention.
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 16