Discover Health and Society

This interdisciplinary program brings together insights from a wide variety of academic disciplines to explore human health through a Bachelor of Arts program focusing on social science and liberal arts approaches. It examines how health and disease are not just rooted in biology but are also shaped by social and cultural influences.

In the Health and Society Program, students examine how health is influenced by global, national, regional, and local forces. These forces include biocultural variation, sociocultural conceptions, social inequalities, political and economic processes, geospatial diversity, and planetary health. Marshalling scholarship from the social sciences and liberal arts, the program offers students the opportunity to learn how experts from different disciplines approach questions of health, healing practices, and health care. Students enrolled in the major or minor may go on to pursue careers in public health, global health, health care management, research, education, policy, advocacy, law, nonprofits, social entrepreneurship, industry, or other career areas.

Why Health and Society?

The Health and Society Program’s interdisciplinary approach brings together an array of scholarly disciplines to understand the intersections of health and society. We offer a variety of courses in which students can find their own niche through different pathways with a focus on the social sciences of health. Advisors and professors encourage students to take their own steps to learn about health, healing, and health care in different lights through coursework, internships, research, clubs, community service, and travel study. We provide students with the tools for a rich undergraduate experience and a meaningful career after they graduate.

Student Perspectives

Building the Foundation for MPH program at Columbia University

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Zoe van Vlaanderen

Zoe van Vlaanderen ’20 began her UVM career in the College of Arts and Sciences Integrated Social Sciences Program (now called the LASP program), which allowed her to take classes with a small group of motivated students who shared similar interests. “We lived in the same building in the Living/Learning Center at UVM and took the same classes together. It was great to be part of this exciting learning community right from the start.”

The diverse mix of interdisciplinary courses fueled her interest in applying social and behavioral health theory to public health practice. She graduated with a B.A. in health and society, along with minors in statistics and economics. Beginning this fall, van Vlaanderen will start a Master of Public Health degree program at Columbia University.

During her time at UVM, she gained extensive research experience working with Professor Jane Kolodinsky, director of UVM’s Center for Rural Studies. The project, funded by a USDA grant, investigated ways to develop food delivery systems in rural economies. “I worked on a food box program that connected small farmers with local general stores. The food box provided fresh produce to customers who couldn’t afford the cost of a whole CSA season.”

This experience motivated her to seek further research opportunities. The following summer, she worked full-time at Ohio State University, investigating opioid addiction in Appalachia. She also spent a semester studying at the University of Ghana, where she took courses such as The Healthcare System in Ghana, Global Health Security, and Culture and Reproductive Health. These experiences have reinforced her commitment to pursuing a career in public health research.

A Passion For Equitable Health Care Access Lead to Fulbright

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Madison Shaffer

“I focused my education on inequity in every way it manifests, with a particular emphasis on public health and the social conditions and determinants of health. I believed that land played a significant role in these issues,” explained Madison Shaffer ’20, a graduating health and society major and recent Fulbright Research Award recipient to Malawi.

Expanding on work she began while studying abroad in Kenya, Shaffer’s Fulbright research explored gender inequities in land rights in Malawi—where, similar to Kenya, legal efforts had been made in recent years to promote women’s land rights. Despite these policies, however, “There were still customary practices in place in these communities that overridden that legal language,” she said. In fact, around 70 percent of households in Malawi relied on women’s income from agricultural labor, but fewer than 20 percent of those households sat on land controlled by women who either worked or lived on it.

“If you have access to an economic resource like land, you’re going to feel more empowered in your own health,” she said. Everything from physical safety and mental health to food access could be tied to land ownership. To improve conditions for these women, Shaffer focused on collecting their stories through interviews and questionnaires.

“I wanted to see if women felt like they could access land, and if they couldn’t, what barriers they had realized or experienced in their lives. If I could record that and piece it together, it would be helpful in advancing discussions on more equitable land laws in Malawi and in other countries in Africa experiencing similar problems,” she said.

A Personalized Path to an MPH, Medical School

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Lindsay Aldrich

"I transferred to UVM after attending a small liberal arts college in New England. As a pre-med undergraduate student, I was drawn in by the hospital on campus, UVM's medical school, and Burlington's general passion for health and well-being. At UVM, I wanted to strike a balance between my love for science, health, and the human experience. I paid close attention to courses that inspired me, such as Healthcare Ethics, Issues in Women's Health, Issues in Contemporary Public Health, and Global Health, Development, and Diversity. I met with CAS Associate Dean Abigail McGowan, initially intending to plan an individually designed major. When she told me about the new health and society major, I found that it was exactly what I had been dreaming of! I was excited for the rest of my undergraduate career and began to envision new and exciting plans for my future, such as earning an MPH in addition to attending medical school."

- Lindsay Aldrich '20

Rachel Wiener's Journey: Health, Society, and Opportunity at UVM

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A Social Science Perspective on Health

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As a complement to STEM's approaches to health in the natural sciences and to clinical approaches in applied health professions, the health and society degree provides a critical social science perspective on health and healing in human populations. Social science adds constructionist, deconstructionist, and political economy frameworks to the picture. These frameworks point to clues for detecting the ways in which all knowledge, including scientific and clinical knowledge, is shaped by different perspectives, values, priorities, identities, cultural frameworks, social conventions, scientific paradigms, and social, political, and financial interests.

Overall the curriculum emphasizes social determinants of health as an overarching framework to analyzing and understanding human health.

Social science frameworks

  • Give us insight into how health and healing are defined, perceived, and enacted in different ways depending on the cultural and/or social setting.
  • Help us to see how health and healing practices are influenced by historical legacies, cultural traditions, ecological settings, social institutions, political and economic systems, and geospatial entanglements.
  • Allow us to examine how and why access to health and health care is often unevenly distributed along the lines of race, ethnicity, nationality, region, class, gender, age, and sexual orientation within and across populations.