American Medical Sociology and Health Problems in the Global South

Abstract

COVID-19 has focused global attention on disease spread across borders. But how has research on infectious and noncommunicable disease figured into the sociological imagination historically, and to what degree has American medical sociology examined health problems beyond U.S. borders? Our 35-year content analysis of 2,588 presentations in the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Section on Medical Sociology and 922 articles within the section’s official journal finds less than 15 percent of total research examined contexts outside the United States. Research on three infectious diseases in the top eight causes of death in low-income countries (diarrheal disease, malaria, and tuberculosis [TB]) and emerging diseases—Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)—was nearly absent, as was research on major noncommunicable diseases. Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) received much more focus, although world regions hit hardest received scant attention. Interviews suggest a number of factors shape geographic foci of research, but this epistemic parochialism may ultimately impoverish sociological understanding of illness and disease.

The sociology of global health: Inequality, disease‐related stigma, and the rise of nongovernmental organizations

“…As discussed, HIV/AIDS and maternal and child health have been key concerns within academic and philanthropic global health efforts. As suggested by Farber and Harris (2022), the sociology of global health subfield has largely neglected chronic NCD, a neglect which is pronounced in the Global South where these diseases are rising faster than in developed countries. Relatedly, the field of sociology disproportionately emphasizes social determinants of health in the United States.…”

“…Yet, even though the disease rate of these in developing countries is growing more rapidly than in the developed world (Miranda et al, 2008;World Health Organization, 2021), studies of NCDs within medical sociology were "… almost exclusively focused on the United States, including all of the presentations on stroke and heart disease…" and nearly all on respiratory diseases, diabetes, and cancer (Farber & Harris, 2022). In response to the impact of global social factors on chronic illness, some scholars forecast the economic burden of NCDs in LMICs (Abegunde et al, 2007) and offer solutions for how this burden may be reduced (Bukhman et al, 2020).…”

“…Among the diseases discussed in this paper that receive attention from both activist and scholarly organizations, HIV/AIDS has historically been prominent in global health and development spending (Ravishankar et al., 2009), and within the medical sociology subfield (Farber & Harris, 2022). Empirical scholarship in this area often centers around individuals' experiences with disease‐related stigma, who experiences worse HIV‐related health outcomes, and the impact of NGOs and pharmaceuticals on mitigating the stigma and poor health associated with the disease.…”

“…Although most work emphasizes the U.S., global health scholarship highlights the disproportionate impact of poor health on the world's most marginalized groups (Anderson et al., 2007; Farber & Harris, 2022; Powers, 2013; Reed et al., 2011; Wenham et al., 2020) and efforts to improve these outcomes. In spite of the staggering monetary investment in these vulnerable populations (see Ravishankar et al., 2009), absence of more obvious improvement in health for these populations suggests that aid efforts may not fully understand their needs.…”

‘Don’t think that we die from AIDS’: Invisibilised uncertainty and global transgender health

“…It furnishes new micro and macro understandings of medical uncertainty in non‐U.S. settings, demonstrating the ‘distinct interconnections and global processes that reshape health and health care in various parts of the world’ (Farber & Harris, 2022 , p. 17; see also Bell & Figert, 2012 ). The article thus answers calls to ‘pars[e] distinct types of medical unknowns’, advancing a sociology of medical ignorance, of which medical uncertainty is a subcategory (Whooley & Barker, 2021 , p. 280).…”