NEJM: Case Studies in Social Science
2020
This series of articles published by the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) examines the importance of social forces and social context in clinical medicine. The articles discuss real clinical cases to understand various social and structural processes and how they shape clinical practice and healthcare. The articles aim to provide an understanding of social concepts that can be used to inform medical education, clinical practice, and health system planning. The cases span topics such as reproductive justice, structural racism, incarceration, treatment affordability, workers’ rights, access to medications, and more.
Articles include:
- Dialogic Praxis — A 16-Year-Old Boy with Anxiety in Southern Brazil
- Misdiagnosis, Mistreatment, and Harm — When Medical Care Ignores Social Forces
- Embracing Multiple Normals — A 12-Year-Old Boy in India with a Cochlear Implant
- Biological Citizenship — A 53-Year-Old Man with Schizoaffective Disorder and PTSD Applying for Supplemental Security Income
- Democratizing Evidence Production — A 51-Year-Old Man with Sudden Onset of Dense Hemiparesis
- Contingent Knowledge and Looping Effects — A 66-Year-Old Man with PSA-Detected Prostate Cancer and Regrets
- Reproductive (In)justice — Two Patients with Avoidable Poor Reproductive Outcomes
- The Right and Left Hands of the State — Two Patients at Risk of Deportation
- Misrecognition and Critical Consciousness — An 18-Month-Old Boy with Pneumonia and Chronic Malnutrition
- The Power and Limits of Classification — A 32-Year-Old Man with Abdominal Pain
- Structural Racism — A 60-Year-Old Black Woman with Breast Cancer
- Social Distance and Mobility — A 39-Year-Old Pregnant Migrant Farmworker
- Structural Iatrogenesis — A 43-Year-Old Man with “Opioid Misuse”
- The Structural Violence of Hyperincarceration — A 44-Year-Old Man with Back Pain
- Structural Differential — A 32-Year-Old Man with Persistent Wrist Pain
- Medicalization and Demedicalization — A Gravely Disabled Homeless Man with Psychiatric Illness
NEJM: Case Studies in Social Science
Source:
Case Studies in Social Science. New England Journal of Medicine 2020. https://www.nejm.org/case-studies-in-social-medicine.