Social Medicine

Social Medicine

Along with other faculty, students and staff in the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, several projects have been undertaken including a special issue of the Public Library of Science Medicine on Social Medicine in the Twenty First Century, the New England Journal of Medicine series “Case Studies in Social Medicine,” and The Lancet Global Social Medicine Case Series.

The Case of the Human: Co-Producing Plural Knowledge on the Body, the Social, and the Subject is a collaborative research project at The University of Chicago Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. Medical and humanistic understandings of health and well-being have intersected in recent decades, but the category of “the human” continues to be defined and applied in different ways. This project sought to identify a more holistic understanding of “the human” that is neither primarily medical nor humanistic, generating critically and clinically innovative knowledge. In September 2024, humanities, social science, and medicine scholars traveled from across the world to the Neubauer Collegium to workshop cases of real patients and communities in order to engage in new conceptual work together.

These cases have continued to develop after the conference, culminating in a collaborative case series titled Cases in Global Social Medicine, which will be published monthly in The Lancet starting in Fall 2025. Please find the link to each case below:

• Series Introduction: Translational social medicine for global health: introducing Cases in Global Social Medicine

• Case 1: Medical compartmentalisation: a patient with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome in Japan

• Case 2: Structural intercompetency: an asylum seeker with abdominal pain in Tijuana, Mexico

• Case 3: Linguistic pragmatism: a woman with progressive abdominal pain in Thailand

• Case 4: Improvisation in contexts of infrastructural violence: a physician practising medicine in Sahrawi refugee camps

• Case 5: Medico-legal entanglement: a woman with abdominal pain in Peru

• Case 6: Social habitus: a factory worker in a stroke rehabilitation unit in France

• Case 7: Myopic medical harm: a man receives free colon cancer screening in Ghana

• Case 8: Ethical shunts: an old woman in an Italian emergency department

• Case 9: Epidemiological invisibilisation: a man overdoses in Tijuana

• Case 10: Statelessness: a boy with neck lumps and lethargy in a Sahrawi refugee camp in Algeria

• Case 11: Disability expertise: a paediatrician with cerebral palsy in Japan

This project was made possible through the generous support of multiple universities, centers, and organizations, including the Harvard University, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, Pasqual Maragall Foundation, University of Barcelona, University of California Alianza MX, University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, and Uppsala University.

UC Berkeley, UChicago, and Univeresity of Barcelona Project Websites:

• Berkeley Center for Social Medicine (BCSM) Projects: The Lancet Cases in Global Social Medicine

• UChicago Neubauer Collegium: The Case of the Human II: Co-Producing Plural Knowledge on the Body, the Social, and the Subject

• University of Barcelona: Global Social Medicine Case Series in The Lancet

Case Series Kick-off Events:

• April 13th, 2026 - UC Berkeley: Social Forces/Clinical Cases: Breaking Boundaries with The Lancet’s Global Social Medicine Cases and Sir Michael Marmot

• April 16th, 2026 - UChicago Neubauer Collegium: Social Forces & Clinical Cases: Breaking Boundaries with The Lancet’s Global Social Medicine Cases

• May 5th, 2026 - University of Barcelona: Breaking Barriers in Global Health: The Lancet Global Social Medicine Case Series - Kick-off with Fernando Simón

Press:

• September 6th, 2024 - UChicago Neubauer Collegium: The Case of the Human: Panel Discussion between the Humanities and Medicine

• November 17th, 2025 - University of Barcelona: ‘The Lancet’ launches series on global social medicine led by an ICREA researcher at the University of Barcelona

• December 4th, 2025 - UC Berkeley Research: Why Social Context Is the Key for Improving Modern Medicine

• December 5th, 2025 - News Medical Life Sciences: New Lancet case study series highlights how social forces shape patient health

• December 16th, 2025 - Pasqual Maragall Foundation: We are co-funding a new series of scientific articles in 'The Lancet' on global social medicine

• April 9th, 2026 - Universitat Rovira i Virgili Medical Anthropology Research Center: Conference "Breaking Barriers in Global Health"

• April 2026 - ICREA: Conference ‘Breaking Barriers in Global Health: The Lancet’ with Fernando Simón

• July 8, 2026 - El Independiente: “El caso de un joven saharaui que recibe tratamiento contra el cáncer en España se cuela en la prestigiosa 'The Lancet'”