Offered By	ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
Academic Contact	Dr Robert Attenborough and Doreen Montag
Areas of Interest	Health, Medicine and the Body

Understanding the nature of health, sickness, and healing necessarily includes exploration of the historical, social, cultural, and economic contexts in which illness is defined and understood. It is in these contexts also that medical systems and specific sets of health care practices arise and evolve.

The wider study of health and medicine thus involves a number of disciplines, whose perspectives can complement and deepen the understandings derived from scientific knowledge and training in clinical skills that take primacy in medical training.

These include fields such as socio-cultural anthropology, biological anthropology,  population health, the sociology of health and illness, health psychology, the history of medicine, philosophy and ethics, and gender studies.

For example, cultural as well as class, ethnic, and gender differences shape understandings of the body, the experience of illness, as well as the classification of illness states, and the application of healing practices. Globalisation processes, too, must be examined as to their impact on the environment and on society and health. The history of medicine leads us to ask how conditions of life have changed over time and place, how people in the past have dealt with sickness and death, and the interplay between political and economic environments and the development of particular medical systems. And, inevitably, the provision of health care results in complex moral and ethical issues, making the field of bioethics an important site of critical investigation.

This major represents a commitment to teaching about health and the development of medical knowledge and bodily practice in a broad historical, social, and cultural context, and presents students with the opportunity to explore further the social study of health, medicine, and the body.

Requirements

The major in Health, Medicine, and the Body consists of a minimum of 42 units. These should be selected as follows:

Either:

First year courses to a maximum value of 12 units (normally 2 courses), taken from courses with the alpha prefix ANTH, ARCH, BIOL, PHIL, HIST, GEND, PSYC, and/or SOCY plus;

The completion of later-year courses to the value of at least 30 units (normally 5 courses), taken from the later year courses listed in the summary of courses for this major.

NB: Unless the convener recommends otherwise, the later year courses must be selected from at least three different disciplines as indicated by their alphanumeric codes.

Or:

A minimum of 42 units (normally 7 courses) at later year level taken from the later year courses listed in the summary of courses for this major.  The later year courses must be selected from at least three different disciplines as indicated by their alphanumeric codes.

There is no honours program in Health, Medicine and the Body as such. However, there is a Population Health Honours program, and the Health, Medicine and the Body major is part of the preparation for it.

For information on Honours in Population Health click here.

The information published on the Study at ANU 2011 website applies to the 2011 academic year only. All information provided on this website replaces the information contained in the Study at ANU 2010 website.