ClassInfo

This topics course will be taught by visiting sociology professor, Johanna Muckenhuber from University of Graz, Austria.

This course is designed with the aim that the students get to know the Austrian health care system and the problems migrants and refugees face in the access to the health care system and that they get to know in detail and reflect about the problems migrants and refugees face in the U.S. Students will discuss the problems and they will learn to discuss the topic not just from a sociological point of view but also from a Human Rights perspective. We will discuss and analyze the effects of cultural differences between health professionals and patients and we will discuss the differences and similarities we can find between Austria and the U.S. In addition, we will reflect on a regular basis about the cultural differences we experience in the course of our interaction with a university teacher from Europe, with students from the U.S., and perhaps also other countries of origin.

The course will be divided into three consecutive phases:

Phase 1 of the course introduces you to the sociology of health illness, including topics such as the social, political, economic and cultural context which have an influence on health and illness: influences on access to health care services: patients' practices in seeking help: health literacy and the intersection of social status, gender a migratory status in people's association with health. Phase 1 will also cover international differences in health care services and the implications of these differences on health and illness. Didactically, Phase 1 introduces you to the foundational readings in the field; this phase is therefore more reading intensive than the following two.

In Phase 2, students will be divided into subgroups. You will organize a focus group discussion in the class with a part of the students as participants and a part of you will conduct the focus group. The topic of the focus group discussion will be "The problems of migrants in the access to health care services". The aim will be to analyze the way students frame this problems and how you discuss the problem as a human rights problem. Phase 2 will conclude with my lecture on a human rights perspective on constraints to the access to health care.

In phase 3, you will get the opportunity to analyze and discuss the transcript of the focus group as well as extracts of interviews of my own research project together with me. I will present also transcripts of interviews and of a focus group with students which I will conduct in Austria. I will lead the discussion and give inputs in particular concerning the Austrian context compared to the U.S. context. This will give you the opportunity to get insights in real empirical social research and to get insights in the Austrian health care systems.

During the first and the second phase of the course you will be asked to develop your own research projects about the intersection of social determinants of health the access to health care services. You may choose to rely on literature and an investigation of the state of the art, but you may also choose to work with the results of the focus groups and with the interview transcripts. In regular office meetings, I will mentor students and support them in the finding process of both existing research and in formulating their own research questions.

In the last meetings of the course you will be asked to present your own research projects. We will discuss the projects in the course and you will get my feedback. The discussions will always have the focus on the human rights perspective. The full papers will be due at the end of the semester so that the final grades can be in according to the grading schedule. Graduate students in this combined class are expected to demonstrate greater depth of discussion, depth and to a degree length of writing assignments, presentations, and leadership of the students.