Master of Arts in Anthropology- Medical Anthropology

Wayne State University

The medical anthropology program at Wayne State is the oldest in the country and the past editorial home of Medical Anthropology Quarterly: The International Journal for the Analysis of Health. Medical anthropologists conduct research, teach and engage in practice relating to health and the ways in which health is maintained, experienced, promoted and threatened in groups past and present throughout the world.The faculty and students in medical anthropology at Wayne State share a common commitment to documenting, understanding and addressing how health and illness are produced in different communities, cultures and societies. They study how health problems, health inequalities and health systems are shaped by and reflect specific historical, geographic and political-economic contexts and change over time.Using methods drawn from ethnography, biomedical and epidemiological research alike, faculty and students work to generate empirically grounded, conceptually sophisticated, analytically powerful accounts of people's words and deeds, their aspirations and struggles, their suffering and efforts to address it. They situate these experiences with health and illness within the increasingly interconnected global environment. Funding from NIH, NIMH, CDC, EPA, MDCH and a range of local foundations has supported research by the WSU medical anthropology program.