Medicine is a social science.

I have a tendency to just write and write... so I'm going to start off with a summary here for those who don't care to slog through my inanities:
Medical outcomes have far-reaching social implications.
Paul Starr wrote an informative (but extremely dense) book about it.
Dr. Stephen Bezruchka can tell you what's up with the social determinants of health.
Don't call my writing inane.

I can hear the pre-meds now:
"Medicine is a social science? Bio and chem are not pansy-assed social sciences."

Now look, I know I'm only a student and I don't have much (anything) by way of field experience, but let me be more clear with my contention here. I'm not saying medicine is sociology or something. Medicine is a practice. It is a craft whose goal is to provide the best health outcomes for patients. The tools of the craft are the sciences we all know and love -- chemistry and biology and so on.

But the focus here is health. The health of people. People make up populations. Populations make up society. I know I'm not making any giant leaps here, and this may be a little over-simplified. But I think I'm making my point. Maybe I can clarify and expand on this later.

Actually, there's been a lot of emphasis on the social impact of medicine in the past few years. Instruction in the understanding of and interaction with varying socio-economic and cultural groups is far more common in medical schools these days. This hasn't always been the case. In fact, physicians used to play a much more powerful role in defining legal and societal norms. Some could argue they still do, and in a lot of ways that's true, but not to the same level as it was up until, say, the 1980s. The effects of medical patriarchy, for better or for worse, have had an enormous impact on American life in the last 100 years, intentionally or not. I could say a ton about this, but check out this Paul Starr book for more on medical patriarchy.

So, I'm going to assume you agree with everything you read on here, so you can see that medicine is indeed a social science. Well, yeah. I mean. It should be. It actually kind of isn't. Look, I don't know a lot about medicine. But we know that physicians diagnose and treat diseases prophylactically. In this country we have a health care model that emphasizes tertiary specialties like cardiology and radiology and oncology and neonatology. Of course these are brilliant folks doing amazing work. But I contend there should be more emphasis on prevention.This is where my interest in epidemiology begins.

More specifically, I'm interested in the social determinants of health. What has the greatest impact on the health of populations? Doctors? Their areas of specialization? Medical technology? Pharmacological wizardry? Quality/cost/availability of health care? Individual behavior? Surgeon General's warnings? Each of those is important, sure. But what carries the most weight when it comes to health outcomes?
Socio-economic status.
It's true. But don't take my word for it.
I'm gonna recommend everyone check out Dr. Stephen Bezruchka. Dr. Bezruchka is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Washington who has done phenomenal work in the fields of public health and the social determinants of health. I'll recommend his article "The Hurrider I Go, the Behinder I Get" to start with. Don't let the title fool you, it's actually an extraordinarily informative and brilliant article.

Alright. This is enough for now, I think.