The Social Medicine Portal

Social Medicine Building Bridges @ the APHA Annual Meeting 10/27/2008

The theme of the 2008 annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA) is “Public Health without Borders.”  We are very pleased that the APHA Medical Care Section has chosen to sponsor a session examining how social medicine can help build bridges between progressive health movements in  North America and Latin America.  We reprint below the abstract from the conference program which contains links to individual presentations.  We are told this is the first time in the history of the APHA that abstracts have been printed in more than one language.

Medicina Social and Social Medicine:

A Framework for Bridging Borders

Monday, October 27, 2008: 2:30 PM

The APHA Medical Care Section founders viewed social medicine as a model for bridging the divide between clinical care and public health. This session explores how social medicine can serve as a framework for collaboration between medicine and public health and between North and South. In a 2006 article discussing the future of social medicine, historian Dorothy Porter pointed to the need to integrate “the historical wisdom acquired during the evolution of the discipline into a new framework … for understanding the complex interaction of biology with the political, economic, social, and cultural relations of the twenty-first century.” In accomplish this integration Dr. Porter proposed cooperation between the Anglo-American social medicine tradition and that of Latin American social medicine (LASM). Concomitantly, the Department of Family and Social Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center initiated a unique partnership with the Latin American Social Medicine Association (ALAMES) creating a bilingual, open-access, online journal (Social Medicine/Medicina Social) utilizing the Open Journal System (Simon Frazier University). This session will discuss key papers published in the journal and explore possibilities for collaboration between Latin American and North American healthcare workers.

Session Objectives: Recognize and discuss the unique experience of social medicine in combining personal medical care with a public health perspective. This objective will be accomplished by a consideration of “classic” papers in social medicine. Learn about Latin American approaches to issues raised in current public health debates in the United States. This objective will be accomplished by discussing Latin American analysis and approaches to health equity. Learn about and consider the application of new technologies (such as electronic publishing) to the development of cross-border collaboration and the ability of such technology to create a space for new voices in public health debates. This objective will be accomplished by the presentation of the development of a bilingual, eJournal of Social Medicine (www.socialmedicine.info) and the UNM Latin American Social Medicine database.

Organizers:

Victor W. Sidel, MD and Matthew Anderson, MD, MSc

Moderator:

Anne-Emanuelle Birn, MA, ScD

Discussant:

Nancy Sohler, PhD, MPH

2:30 PM

Social Medicine as a Builder of Bridges / La medicina social como constructora de puentes
Victor W. Sidel, MD and Peter Selwyn, MD, MPH

2:40 PM

Development of a Bilingual Online Journal of Social Medicine/Desarrollo de una revista electrónica de medicina social
Matthew Anderson, MD and Florencia Peña, PhD

2:50 PM

Latin American Social Medicine Database: A Resource for Public Health/ La Región de América Latina Base de Datos de la Medicina Social: Un Recurso para la Salud Pública
Howard Waitzkin, MD, PhD

3:00 PM

A Practice of Social Medicine / Una Práctica de Medicina Social
H. Jack Geiger, MD, MSciHyg

3:10 PM

Social Medicine in Chile / La Medicina Social en Chile
Roberto Belmar, MD

3:20 PM

Contribution of Latin American Social Medicine to U.S. Debates on Health Equity/ Contribuciones de la Medicina Social Latinoamericana al debate sobre la igualdad en salud en los Estados Unidos
Celia Iriart, MPH, PhD

3:30 PM

Discussion: Nancy Sohler to moderate

See individual abstracts for presenting author’s disclosure statement and author’s information.

Organized by: Medical Care
Endorsed by: Community Health Workers SPIG, International Health, Peace Caucus, Socialist Caucus

This was posted by Matt Anderson, MD