Medical Anthropology Major

Med ANTH Fall 2023 Courses

Spring 2024 Research Methods courses that are planned to be offered (this could change, so please plan ahead):
ANTH 326 – Practicing Medical Anthropology (cap of 16)
ANTH 390 – Anthropology of Fitness (cap of 24)
ANTH 582 – Fieldwork with Social Models of Well-Being (cap of 20)
ANTH 676 – Research Methods in Human Biology (cap of 15)

Learn what Medical Anthropology can do for pre-med students here!

Medical anthropology addresses the biological, cultural, and political-economic dimensions of health, illness, and healing historically and at present. Reflecting the multi-disciplinary character of its parent field of anthropology, medical anthropology deploys quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the body as a site of evolutionary processes and cultural symbols, and healing as interpretive processes at macro, meso, and micro levels.

This program provides students with the fundamental knowledge and exposure needed to pursue careers and post-graduate studies in fields related to global health, public health, allied health care and health and human services, medicine, dentistry, and other emerging disciplines.

For students seeking a career in the health professions, the program in medical anthropology complements training in the natural sciences. Courses in medical anthropology explore population variations in health outcomes due to the influence of culture. The curriculum also equips students with ways to understand the meanings people find in illness and healing and the moral stakes of medical decisions. Additionally, courses in medical anthropology give students awareness of the formal institutions and social relations that become the channels and limitations of technical knowledge about illness and healing.

Upon completion of the medical anthropology program, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate knowledge of the relationships between humans’ health and historical, biocultural, and societal dynamics
• Demonstrate understanding of the ways comparative cultural and historical experiences impact health-related values and practices, definitions of illness, and methods of healing
• Demonstrate competence in reading, analyzing, and communicating social science research on health
• Gain experience conducting and/or applying research using medical anthropology’s methods
• Gain an understanding of medical anthropology’s relationships to the holistic, parent discipline of anthropology and its contributions to applied professional fields such as medicine and global health.

Medical Anthropology BA Degree, as of 8.15.2022 

Below is the list of required categories of coursework and courses that fulfill the various categories, arranged in a chronological plan of study, for the major in Medical Anthropology (UNC-CH’s Department of Anthropology).

The UNC Undergraduate Catalog listing of courses that count towards the Research Methods and Experiences requirement contains errors that are in the process of being corrected. Please refer to the list below for the accurate listing.

Other Department Courses that count for Research methods Med ANTH Requirement Sociology:

251 MEASUREMENT AND DATA COLLECTION

251 MEASUREMENT AND DATA COLLECTION

252 DATA ANALYSIS

318 COMPUTATIONAL SOCIOLOGY

Geography:

391 Quantita Methods

392 Research Methods in Geography

410 Modeling Env. Systems

456 Geovisualizing Change

477 Intro Remote Sens Env

491 Intro to GIS

592 GISCI Programming

Epidemiology:

700 SAS and Data Management

Biostatistics:

600 Principles of Statistical Inference

661 Probability and Statistical Inference

668 Design of Public Health Studies

669 Working with Data in a Public Health Research Setting

In addition to the 2 foundational and 2 methods /experiences courses, students must take 5
total elective courses, including at least 1 from each of the following two groups,
Biological/ecological and Sociocultural (listed below). These courses can be taken at any time during the student’s tenure at UNC. No more than 2 of the 5 courses can be at the 100- level. Students may count up to 2 ANTH courses not included in this list, or up to 2 courses from outside the Department that relate to the student’s area of interest in Medical Anthropology. 

Biological and Ecological Electives for the Medical Anthropology Major 

Sociocultural electives for the Medical Anthropology Major