Health and Society

Offering multidisciplinary inquiry and reflection for students interested in the intersection of physiological, social, political and ethical factors concerning human health.

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Health is a key human good – even a human right, some claim – and, in the last century, a center of gravity for vast economic and scientific investment. Infant mortality plummeted and human lifespans increased in some places, but not symmetrically across race, class, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, and culture. Some of the putative gains in health are contested: lives are longer, but more people die slowly and away from home; and the United States spends more per capita on health care than any country in the world but achieves only average public health results. This major offers multidisciplinary inquiry and reflection for students interested in the intersection of physiological, social, political and ethical factors concerning human health. 

Public health at many institutions is a pre-professional track, with students likely to spend considerable time manipulating spreadsheets as if they were running a hospital or the county health department.  Instead, our major offers a student the experience of thinking about human health from a liberal arts perspective. 

We ask questions.

What are our responsibilities and obligations to each other about health?

How can we understand human health – in terms of biological capability and function and in terms of social constructions?

Health and Society News

Ursinus Adds Interdisciplinary “Health and Society” Major

As millions of people around the world continue to face the COVID-19 pandemic—and while issues of health disparities and healthcare access remain prominently at hand—students who wish to enter the field of public health upon graduation will now be given a clearer pathway to do so at Ursinus.
Read the full story

F. W. Olin Hall 219

Professor Kelly Sorensen

Coordinator
610-409-3527
ksorensen@ursinus.edu