MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY

NEWSLETTER
ASA | Summer 2020 | Volume 56, Issue 4

Notes from the Chair

Inside this issue:
Deborah Carr carrds@bu.edu
Notes from the Chair 1
I hope that you and your
Section awards 3 loved ones are well during
t h e s e d i f fi c u l t a n d
Student Section 10
tumultuous times. The
Health Policy 12 COVID-19 pandemic
continues to take an
Teaching 13 unprecedented toll on the
health, financial stability, and
Career and 15
feelings of security of nearly
Employment
every nation in the world.
New books 18
The murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor,
New articles 22 Rayshard Brooks, and others have triggered worldwide protests against
systemic racism and white supremacy. The insights of sociologists are
more valuable than ever, as our research sheds light on and (ideally)
Special points of provides a foundation for productive and progressive evidence-based
interest: solutions.

Sharing, discussing, debating, and disseminating our research is at the

• Section council 9
core of our annual meetings. This year, things will look and sound a bit
election results
different, but our research is as vital as ever. I am delighted that we will
• Covid-19 17 have sessions and more than a dozen roundtables held either “live” via
Dispatches from Zoom or as a pre-recorded session during our August 8-11, 2020
Medical Sociology annual meeting. Specific details will be forthcoming from ASA and
shared with our section in late July.
• Be a student editor 18
for 2020/21

(continued)
 Summer 2020 Volume 56, Issue 4

Among our highlights are:

• “Health and Health Care among Sexual Minorities” session, organized by Eric Wright
• “Expanding Diversity of Biosocial Research: Opportunities & Challenges” session co-organized by Jacob
Cheadle and Bridget Goosby, and co-sponsored with Evolution, Biology & Society (EBS)
• A special panel on COVID-19 co-sponsored with Science, Knowledge and Technology (SKAT).
• More than a dozen roundtables featuring topics including Patient and Physician Interaction; Social
Determinants of Health; The Intersection of Sexual Identity and Health; Neighborhoods and Health;
Emotions and Health; Medical Knowledge and much more. Thanks to session co-organizers Libby Luth
and Lindsay Stevens, and the many table presiders for creating such a robust and lively set of
roundtables.

Another highlight of our annual meeting will be our Zoom business meeting, on Tuesday August 11 from
12:30-1:10 pm ET (9:30-10:10 am PT). We will welcome and congratulate our newly elected officers and
council members, and will raise a virtual glass to the winners of our section awards! Details are provided
elsewhere in this newsletter. A sincere “thank you” to our session organizers, nominations committee
members, and awards committee members for their hard work and dedication.

At our Business meeting, we will also unveil exciting plans for our next year, including the formation of a
diversity, equity and inclusion committee dedicated to working for inclusiveness in our programming,
scholarship, and other section and association endeavors. I am delighted to share an important step along
this path. The ASA Medical Sociology Council unanimously voted to contribute $4,000 from our 2020
annual meeting reception budget to the ASA Minority Fellowship Program (MFP). MFP supports the
development and training of sociologists of color in any sub-area or specialty in the discipline. Our
contribution was part of a concerted effort among ASA sections to support the MFP, and to work together
for greater diversity in our profession. I am especially pleased to share that of the first 37 ASA sections
contributing to this important initiative, our section’s contribution was the largest! Thank you to secretary/
treasurer Miranda Waggoner and past-president Brea Perry; their knowledge of all things budgetary were
critical to the Council’s vote. And thanks to all of you for renewing your memberships and our tireless
membership committee for expanding our numbers – our large section size enables us to have a powerful
impact.

We are also committed to ensuring that junior scholars receive the support and mentoring they desire, even
if we cannot do so face-to-face in San Francisco this year. A sincere thank you to our incoming chair Andrew
London, and student council members Aalap Bommaraju and Alex Brewer for developing mentoring
surveys for mentees and mentors. Please complete these surveys to help us as a section uphold our
commitment to supporting the next generation of medical sociologists.

Our communication and sharing with one another should not be limited to the weeks leading up to the
annual meeting, however. Thanks to Aalap and Alex, our long-dormant Twitter and Facebook accounts
have been revitalized. Please use these platforms as well as our listserv to share your latest publications,
job openings, insights, or anything else you’d like our community to know!

I hope you enjoy our summer 2020 newsletter. Thanks to all our contributors, and especially to our editor
extraordinaire, Evan Roberts for preparing this wonderful document and our hard-working listserv manager
Lilla Pivnick for distributing it. Wishing you all a restful and replenishing summer!

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Section awards

2020 Simmons Award

The Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation in Medical Sociology Award is given each year by the
Medical Sociology section, with eligible candidates having defended their doctoral dissertations within two
academic years prior to the annual meeting at which the award is made.

The winner of the 2020 Simmons award is Lauren Olsen for her article: “The Conscripted Curriculum and the
Reproduction of Racial Inequalities in Contemporary U.S. Medical Education” which is part of her larger
dissertation entitled: Constructing Relevance and Reproducing Inequality: The Integration of the Humanities
and Social Sciences into Contemporary U.S. Medical Education. In Olsen’s groundbreaking study published
in JHSB, she introduces the concept of the Conscripted Curriculum to capture how students’ social identities
are utilized by educators in the professionalization process. She draws from her ethnographic research in
medical education to illuminate these processes. She finds that most educators create the conscripted
curriculum by eliciting students to share their social experiences with race in the small group setting while
only providing students with didactic material on biological understandings of race. The processes that she
discovers could be applied across multiple settings, and, therefore, her work provides insights for multiple
subfields in sociology, especially medical sociology and race/ethnicity. Her work also informs research and
practice in other fields, such as education and medicine. She uses a large number of interviews with a rich
sample of both educators and students and a strong analytical approach. The paper is well written with
practical policy and practice suggestions. She also had a glowing letter of support.

For more information on Lauren Olsen, see her

website www.laurendolsen.com

Article: Olsen, Lauren D. 2019. “The Conscripted

Curriculum and the Reproduction of Racial
Inequalities in Contemporary U.S. Medical
Education.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior
60(1): 55-68.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146518821388

Nominator: John H. Evans

Dissertation Title: Constructing Relevance and

Reproducing Inequality: The Integration of the
Humanities and Social Sciences into Contemporary
U.S. Medical Education (UC San Diego, 2019)

Award Committee Chair: Hedwig (Hedy) Lee,

Washington University in St Louis.

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Section awards
2020 Louise Johnson Scholar
The Louise Johnson Scholar fund was established in memory of Louise Johnson, a pioneering medical
sociologist whose mentorship and scholarship we are pleased to honor. The fund was made possible by Sam
Bloom of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, a former colleague of Louise Johnson. The award is based on
academic merit and the quality of an accepted ASA paper related to medical sociology (papers with faculty
co-authors are ineligible).

Lilla Pivnick is the recipient of the 2020 Louise Johnson Scholar Award. Her early record of scholarship
exemplifies both the work and pioneering spirit of the medical sociologist in whose name this award is given.
In her specific ASA-accepted article: “Occupational Requirements of Care Work and Inflammation among
Early Career Care Workers”—she offers a very timely and innovative biosocial approach to care work and
health. The focus of this prescient paper is drawn from her cutting-edge research program that brings
together key concerns surrounding occupational health, care work, ethics and chronic disease and it has the
likely potential not only to advance theory but also inform policy in this critical and understudied area.
Especially during the challenging time and aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Lilla also has an impressive
track record of research productivity in demography and psychology along with a long list of student
leadership roles and awards at the University of Texas, Austin and beyond. For example, her MA thesis was
published in Sociological Perspectives and she has articles soon to be published in journals such as, Journal
of Adolescent Research, Social Psychology Quarterly and Early Childhood Research Quarterly, among others.
All of which strongly suggests that she has great promise as a scholar who can bridge and contribute to
multiple literatures on health. This award honors what she has accomplished thus far and supports what she
will contribute to the future of Medical Sociology.

Award Committee Chair: Patricia Rieker, Boston University

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Section awards
2020 Howard B. Kaplan Memorial Award in Medical Sociology
This Kaplan award is established to support graduate students doing research in one of the substantive areas
that defined the distinguished academic career of Dr. Howard B. Kaplan, namely mental health, self-concept
and health, or deviance.

Nicholas C. Smith, a pre-doctoral student at Indiana University, is the 2020 Howard B. Kaplan Memorial
Awardee. Nick was chosen in part because he has already demonstrated through his two published single-
authored studies of mental health disparities of racial and ethnic minorities* how his timely work advances
the social psychology focus of Howard Kaplan’s distinguished academic career. Besides being a co-author of
numerous other publications, Nick earned a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research
Scholar grant in his fi rst year of graduate school. According to his glowing nominating letter he also is
currently the President of the Graduate Student Association, the Treasurer of the Undergraduate Sociology
Club, and Chair of the Graduate Recruitment Committee at Indiana. This award recognizes Nick’s leadership
potential, early productivity, and the exceptional promise of his ongoing research into the mental health
effects of systems of racial and socioeconomic disadvantage to make a major, ongoing contribution to
numerous areas of medical sociology.

Smith, Nicholas C. Forthcoming. “How can Stigma

Contribute to our Understanding of the Formation
and Mobilization of Collective Identities in Health
Social Movements?” Sociology Compass.
https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12796

Smith, Nicholas C. 2019. “Differential Vulnerability to

Perceived Discrimination between African American
and Caribbean Black Adolescents: The Role of
Parental Nativity Status.” Journal of Racial and Ethnic
Health Disparities, 7, pp.428-435. https://doi.org/
10.1007/s40615-019-00671-z

Award Committee Chair: Patricia Rieker, Boston

University

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Section awards
2020 Donald W. Light Award for Applied Medical Sociology
The Donald W. Light Award for the Applied or Public Practice of Medical Sociology is given in alternate years
to a book or journal article published in the preceding two years that employs the concepts and methods of
medical sociology to an applied issue or problem of significance. 

The winning book is The Medicalization of Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma, and the Patient Experience by
Michelle Newhart (University of LaVerne) and William Dolphin (University of Redlands).

The Medicalization of Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma, and the Patient Experience is an in-depth look at
patients’ experiences navigating the social, legal, and medical landscapes of medical marijuana use. The
book draws on in-depth interviews with 40 middle-aged medical marijuana patients, as well as a social and
historical analysis of cultural, scientific, and policy shifts in the definition and use of marijuana over time. This
research is exceptionally timely, compelling, and comprehensive. The authors seamlessly weave core medical
sociological theories, rich patient narratives, quantitative and historical insights, and implications for policy
and practice. Because this excellent work clearly “contributes to politically or ethically important challenges in
health, health care, or health care policy at the national or international level,” the committee is very pleased
to honor Michelle Newhart and William Dolphin with the Donald W. Light Award for the Applied or Public
Practice of Medical Sociology.

Newhart, Michelle and William Dolphin. 2019. The Medicalization of

Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma, and the Patient Experience. New York,
NY: Routledge.

Award Committee Chair: Brea Perry, Indiana University

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Section awards
2020 Eliot Freidson Outstanding Publication Award 
The Freidson Award is given in alternate years to a book or journal article published in the preceding two
years that has had a major impact on the field of medical sociology. The 2020 award is awarded to a book
published in either 2018 or 2019.

The 2020 winner is Celeste Watkins-Hayes' Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront
Inequality. 

The honorable mention is

Owen Whooley's On the
Heels of Ignorance:
Psychiatry and the Politics of
Not Knowing.

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Section awards
Leo G. Reeder award
The Leo G. Reeder Award is the highest honor awarded by the ASA Medical Sociology section, and
recognizes scholarly contributions, especially a body of work displaying an extended trajectory of
productivity that has contributed to theory and research in medical sociology, along with teaching,
mentoring, and service to the medical sociology community, broadly defined.

Debra Umberson, Centennial Commission Professor of Sociology, Director of the Population Research
Center, and Co-Director of the Texas Aging & Longevity Center at the University of Texas at Austin, is the
recipient of the 2020 Leo G. Reeder Award. A profile of Professor Umberson was published in the
Winter 2019 issue of the Medical Sociology newsletter.

The Reeder award committee unanimously decided that there would not be a 2021 award recipient. All
candidates nominated for 2021 will be forwarded for consideration for the 2022 award.   This will allow
our 2020 recipient Debra Umberson the opportunity to deliver her Reeder lecture at the Medical
Sociology Section Awards ceremony at the 2021 ASA meeting in Chicago. Her 2020 lecture was
cancelled due to the cancellation of the annual meeting.

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2020 Section Election Results

Chair elect
Rin Reczek The Ohio State University

Secretary-Treasurer elect
LaShaune Johnson Creighton University

Council Member
Hui Zheng The Ohio State University

Health Policy and Research Chair

Stephanie Teixeira-Poit North Carolina State University

Membership Committee Chair

Patricia Thomas Purdue University

Chair-elect, Nominations committee

Ann Bell University of Delaware

Member, Nominations Committee (2 elected from 4)

Taylor Hargrove University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Jessica Ho University of Southern California

Student Member, Nominations Committee

Michael Garcia University of Texas at Austin

Student representative to Section Council

Yvonne Chen Vanderbilt University

Photo used under Creative Commons license: https://flic.kr/p/

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Student section
We are Wan-Zi Lu (left) and Emily Parker (right),
this year’s student editors of the Medical Sociology
Newsletter. Wan-Zi is a PhD candidate in sociology
at the University of Chicago, and Emily is a PhD
candidate in Policy Analysis and Management at
Cornell University.

Send ideas and feedback to

wanzilu@uchicago.edu eap249@cornell.edu

For our summer column, we explored the topic of doing publicly-engaged, policy-relevant medical
sociology in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. We spoke with Dr. Elaine Hernandez, co-winner of last
year’s Donald Light Paper Award for Applied or Public Practice of Medical Sociology. Dr. Hernandez
completed her doctorate at the University of Minnesota and is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology
at Indiana University, where she specializes in the study of health inequalities. She shared her motivations for
doing policy-relevant research and suggestions for how students can translate their findings to non-
academic audiences in the context of COVID-19.
Before starting her Ph.D., Dr. Hernandez experienced
first-hand how academic research could be used to
inform state-level policy decisions. She received a
M a s t e r ’s i n Pu b l i c H e a l t h , i n p u b l i c h e a l t h
administration and policy, at the University of
Minnesota and briefly worked for the Minnesota
Department of Health in policy and communications.
Witnessing the strength of ties between Minnesota’s
public health researchers and state legislators
provided her with a foundation for understanding how
to translate research and make policy
recommendations.

Dr. Hernandez shared that she is motivated by a desire

for research to inform solutions that can be applied to
public practice or policy. Publicly engaged scholarship
can also inspire new research ideas. Dr. Hernandez
described how her service on the Indiana maternal
mortality review committee has informed questions
that she now asks in her research.

Research in medical sociology also lends itself to public engagement. Dr. Hernandez pointed out how
“health is one of those areas where there are very real, obvious connections between policy and sociology,
even prior to the pandemic.” For instance, she recently contributed to developing cultural competency
training for contact tracers in Indiana. She was able to directly apply her research experience and
knowledge about health inequalities to this time-sensitive issue. In addition, she’s hoping for students in her
Fall 2020 “Health and Society: Sociology for Health Professionals” course to be trained as contact tracers,
which would provide a valuable opportunity for them to engage in the public health crisis.

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Student Section
Her advice to students of medical sociology interested in translating their research to a non-academic
audience: “don’t reinvent the wheel.” Learn from people who have experience in informing policy, applying
research, or studying interventions. Take classes outside your department, Dr. Hernandez suggested, such as
in public health or public policy. Gaining interdisciplinary tools can help graduate students both in translating
research and opening up job prospects. She further encouraged medical sociology students to seek out real-
world experiences related to our research interests, such as internships or community engagement projects,
emphasizing that we have just as much to learn from community members as they do from us.

In the time of COVID-19, though, Dr. Hernandez would not necessarily recommend that students go out into
the field anytime soon. Issues of data quality, such as low response rates, may detrimentally affect student’s
field research while the pandemic is ongoing. What she did encourage was for students to not feel limited to
studying the pandemic specifically, and instead, to broaden our focus to its many spillover effects. Most
importantly, she advised students to focus on building a solid foundation in medical sociology so that we can
then apply our knowledge to whatever problem is at hand: “that’s what medical sociologists are particularly
good at—a theoretical perspective that can be applied to different topics,” she noted.

One thing that has changed due to the pandemic, Dr. Hernandez pointed out, is the sense of urgency for us
to translate our research to inform policy decisions. Despite the time pressure, the quality of our research
must take priority: “now we’re going to have this urgency, but we have to do it right... your job is to do the
best research possible.” Now is the time to develop research that is falsifiable, rigorous, and thorough, in
order to make the most informed recommendations to policymakers.

In closing, Dr. Hernandez remarked that we’re going to be studying the aftereffects of the pandemic for
decades, and medical sociology students of this era will be perfectly positioned to bring a “fresh perspective
and new energy” to help the scholars in the field and beyond understand this huge health shock. With that,
we’d like to thank Dr. Hernandez for sharing her words of wisdom for the graduate student column.

Covid-19 transmission concerns in Minneapolis, Spring 2020

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Health Policy
Public Sociology in the Time of Coronavirus
This quarter’s column highlights work from three of our section members
who have conducted research on the use of police force on blacks and
the collateral consequences of racially-disparate policing on the black
community. – Michael Esposito, Hedwig Lee, and Alyasah Ali Sewell.

Edwards, Frank, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito. 2019. “Risk of Being
Killed by Police use of Force in the United States by age, Race-Ethnicity,
and Sex.” PNAS 116(34):16793-16798. https://doi.org/10.1073/
pnas.1821204116.

Edwards, Frank R., Michael Esposito, and Hedwig Lee. 2018. “Risk of
Police-Involved Death by Race/Ethnicity and Place, United States,
2012-2018.” American Journal of Public Health 108(9): 1241-8. https://
doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304559

Shannon Monnat
Sewell, Abigail. 2018. “The Intersectional, Structuralist, and Anti-
(@smonnat) is the Lerner
Geneticism Centres of Black Lives Matter.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 41(8).
Chair of Public Health
https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2018.1444191.
Promotion and
Associate Professor of
Sewell, Abigail. 2018. “Stop and Frisk: The Use and Abuse of a
Sociology at Syracuse
Controversial Policing Tactic.” Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of
University.
Reviews 47(2):236-238. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094306118755396ss.

Sewell, Abigail. 2017. “The Illness Associations of Police Violence: Differential Relationships by
Ethnoracial Composition.” Sociological Forum 32(51):975-997. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12361.

Sewell, Abigail, Kevin A. Jefferson, and Hedwig Lee. 2016. “Living under Surveillance: Gender,
Psychological Distress, and Stop-Question-and-Frisk Policing in New York City.” Social Science & Medicine
159:1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.04.024

Sewell, Abigail and Kevin A. Jefferson. 2016. “Collateral Damage: The Health Effects of Invasive Police
Encounters in New York City.” Journal of Urban Health 93:42-67. http://doi:10.1007/s11524-015-0016-7

Sociologists Rayshawn Ray (https://socy.umd.edu/facultyprofile/ray/rashawn) and Victor Rios (https://

www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/victor-rios) have also conducted extensive research on this topic.

Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 12

 Summer 2020
Fieldnote Activity for a Qualitative Methods Course
Mieke Thomeer McBride
mthomeer@uab.edu
Spencer Headworth
(Purdue University)
Medical Sociology Section of the ASA
Volume 56, Issue 4
Teaching
(in Classroom or Online)
Methods courses are generally interactive, with hands-on activities
throughout the semester to give students hands-on experiences. In the
Qualitative Methods courses we teach at the undergraduate and
doctoral levels, these activities are essential for learning how to design,
conduct, and evaluate research. In our units on ethnography and
participant observation, we use an activity in class to help students
develop best practices for writing fieldnotes—or at least gain
appreciation for the skills needed to write fieldnotes. In this column, we
provide details on this assignment (two versions: one used by Mieke
and the other by Spencer) which will likely be especially useful in
coming semesters in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic as we are
unable to use more traditional fieldnote assignments (such as class field
trips to public spaces to observe).
The complete exercise takes around two hours. Before class, students
are told to bring something to class that they would be comfortable
using to take notes similar to how they might actually be able to take
notes in the field. We recommend a pen or pencil and a small notebook
or a few pieces of blank paper, but students could also bring a tablet
and stylus. In Mieke’s version of this exercise, she tells the students that
they are going to watch a documentary clip (about 5-10 minutes) and
write down their observations—legibly because they will be sharing
them with another student. For this first part, students receive very few
instructions, just to write whatever they observe or notice. Immediately
after the clip ends, students swap notes, and read and discuss each
other’s notes. Then each dyad reports back to the whole class about
what they noticed in juxtaposing their notes. Because of how vague the
instructions are, student fieldnotes are very different, with most students
writing a fairly unfocused collection of everything they could think of.
We then discuss the experience of writing fieldnotes—students typically
say that before the clip started, they assumed this would be simple, but
they were quickly overwhelmed, realizing how much they were missing
and not being sure what to pay attention to.
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Before beginning the second part of the activity, we discuss common elements of fieldnotes, using a section
from Emerson’s Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. We talk about how a key element of fieldnotes—especially
fieldnotes early in a project—are the initial impressions of a scene. We then watch another short segment of
the documentary, with students focusing only on writing their initial impressions of the scene and using
guiding questions from Emerson. Immediately after the clip, students swap notes with another student to
read and discuss, and then debrief as a class. We then return to Emerson’s book and talk about description,
dialogue, and characterization, with each student picking one to focus on for this part of the activity. We also
talk about the usefulness of jottings—short notes written down quickly and discreetly and expanded later.
Students then watch the third (and final) clip, and Mieke recommends they write jottings and tells them she’ll
give them time to expand these into fieldnotes. Students compare notes as a class, discussing what was
observed in terms of description, dialogue, and characterization.

As the final part of this activity in class, students look through their notes and add asides to the margins of
their fieldnotes. They then break into small groups of 3-4 and brainstorm a topic for an analytic memo based
on their notes and asides. Mieke asks them, “What are some ideas that seem most theoretically interesting?
What are ideas that were repeated across your notes? How can you build on these ideas next time?” We also
discuss as a class why taking fieldnotes based on a documentary is different than choosing and physically
going to a field site. This sets us up for our next activity, where we choose a site as a class, and then students
visit the site individually and take notes, which we later compare.

Spencer designed his version of this exercise for use in a three-hour doctoral seminar on qualitative
research methods. He uses the documentary Wildland (https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/
wildland/; available on Amazon Prime as well as digitally through many libraries). He recommends three
sections: a training segment (14:50-25:00), the crew’s first fire call (26:30-38:07), and frontline firefighting
(54:00-1:07:00). He asks the students to trade notes with one classmate after watching the first segment, and
with a different classmate after the second segment, to give them an opportunity to compare and contrast
their notes with multiple others’. After each exchange of notes, he asks each dyad to discuss with each other
how their notes compare, and then report back to the group what they noticed in juxtaposing their notes.
He does not ask students to exchange notes after the third clip, but guides the class in a discussion about
the emerging themes that they could see as potential topics to address in an article or book. This activity is
coupled with a discussion of an article they read before class—Desmond, M. (2006). Becoming a
firefighter. Ethnography, 7(4), 387-421—which focuses on a similar group to the crew depicted in Wildland.
They discuss the themes Desmond highlighted, how he described his methodology, how he used evidence
from fieldnotes, and so on.

As a modification for online classes, we recommend choosing a film all students have free access to through
the university library, YouTube, or Vimeo, contacting your university’s librarian for suggestions. Include extra
instructions about making sure have a distraction free workspace, and ask students to take notes on a piece
of paper which they can then upload to the class website using their phone’s camera or scanner. This
assignment can be asynchronous with clear due dates spread out over 1-2 weeks, and students can use
Flipgrid (or a similar video service) or the online discussion board to discuss each other’s fieldnotes, as well
as short reflections to provide their own thoughts on the process.

Regardless of the documentary or clips chosen, we suggest finding segments that have a long stretch of
uninterrupted observation. If you have recommendations for films you’ve used for a similar assignment,
please email Mieke (mthomeer@uab.edu), and she’ll post on Twitter (@miekebeth) or mention in a later
column.

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Career and Employment

Theresa Morris
theresa.morris@tamu.edu
Who could have imagined when we worked on our last newsletter
submission in March that our world would be so fundamentally different
this time around. Last September, we sat down and planned newsletter
topics for the year. We anticipated our summer newsletter submission
would focus on ASA Medical Sociology sessions and activities that would
be particularly relevant to issues of career and employment. The novel
Corona virus has turned the academic world upside down, and this is
particularly the case for those on the job market. Thus, in a change of
plans, we focus this newsletter submission on virtual interviews, the
cancellation of the in-person 2020 ASA Annual Meeting, and an exciting
new Medical Sociology mentoring program for graduate students and
post docs.
For those on the job market, almost all interviews are being conducted
virtually now. As a job-seeker it is critical to still prepare for interviews just
as one would for a phone or in-person interview. We found some helpful
virtual-interview specific tips from Indeed.com:

1. Test your technology

2. Wear professional clothing

3. Limit distractions

4. Use professional body language

5. Be authentic

6. Follow up (“How to Succeed in a Virtual Interview” 2020)

Kelly McNamara
knmcnamara33@tamu.edu

Further, Ashley DiFranza (2020) offers additional tips. First, DiFranza suggests keeping their
virtual identity professional. This means having simple usernames and email addresses, which
might consist of a combination of first and last name but not contain symbols or the numbers
zero (0) or one (1) because they could be confused with letters. Second, DeFranza emphasizes
candidates need to be cognizant of their body language. For example, one should position
their camera so it is at eye-level and remember to make eye contact with the camera and not
the screen. Also, write notes on post it notes and attach them to the computer screen to avoid
constantly looking down during the interview.

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Career and Employment

Next, we turn to the cancellation of the in-person ASA Conference. ASA tasked session organizers to
organize sessions into live or prerecorded sessions if participants are willing and able. We want to
emphasize, especially for graduate students and junior scholars, regardless of whether or not one
participates in a live or prerecorded session, one may list paper acceptance on their CV. The APA Style
reference indicates that if a conference is cancelled one can add the following to the end of the reference:
“(Conference canceled)” (McAdoo 2020). If one virtually presents, it is not required to indicate the
conference was conducted virtually (McAdoo 2020).

Finally, we want to share an exciting new mentoring opportunity the Medical Sociology section is offering,
spurred by a desire to help graduate students and post docs during this tumultuous time. Faculty interested
in mentoring a graduate student or post doc, please indicate your interest here. Graduate students and
post docs interested in being mentored, please indicate your interest here. We expect this program will be
a great success!

References:

Anderson, Bruce. 2020. “7 Tips for Conducting a Seamless Video Job Interview.” LinkedIn Talent Blog.
Retrieved May 25, 2020 (https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/candidate-experience/
2020/tips-for-conducting-seamless-virtual-job-interview).

Anon. 2020. “How to Succeed in a Virtual Interview.” Indeed Career Guide. Retrieved May 25, 2020
(https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/interviewing/virtual-interview).

DiFranza, Ashley. 2020. “8 Tips for Acing Your Next Virtual Interview.” Northeastern University Graduate
Programs. Retrieved May 25, 2020 (https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/virtual-interview-
tips/).

McAdoo, Timothy. 2020. “How to Create an APA Style Reference for a Canceled Conference
Presentation.” American Psychological Association. Retrieved May 25, 2020 (https://apastyle.apa.org/
blog/canceled-conferences).

Social distancing instructions to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19

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 Summer 2020 Volume 56, Issue 4

COVID-19: Dispatches from Medical Sociology

Medical sociologists  Tania Jenkins  (PhD, University of
North Carolina-Chapel Hill) and  Elaine Hernandez  (PhD,
MPH, Indiana University) paired up for a four-part
s e r i e s ,  C O V I D - 1 9 :  D i s p a t c h e s  f r o m  M e d i c a l
Sociology in The Society Pages, to provide insight on how
the current COVID-19 pandemic is changing the
landscape of American healthcare.

I n t h e fi r s t s e g m e n t , J e n k i n s a n d H e r n a n d e z
cover  worsening inequities in the rural/urban health
divide  as smaller, rural hospitals struggle to stay afloat
during the crisis and patients are urged to avoid routine /
non-essential medical visits.

In the second segment on  telemedicine and its

implications for the patient/provider relationship, they
Elaine Hernandez
address the pros and cons of the uptick in telemedicine,
@e_hernandez8
including increased access but also the potential for
worsening power imbalances between providers and
patients.

The third segment on the  changing dynamics among

health professions  examines how the pandemic has
prompted governments to loosen licensing regulations
and suspend practice restrictions to expand the local
health workforce, thereby (at least temporarily)
challenging physicians’ longstanding control over medical
matters and professions.

Finally, the last segment explores the  challenges facing

medical education, particularly with medical students
Tania Jenkins graduating early and with trainees facing a high-stress,
@TaniaMJenkins high-risk, and high-uncertainty work environments.
Jenkins and Hernandez conclude with three evidence-
based policy recommendations for keeping the workforce
healthy and effective during the pandemic and beyond.

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 Summer 2020 Volume 56, Issue 4
From the editor
Student co-editor
needed!

Every year the Medical Sociology newsletter has at

least one student co-editor.

Normally I’d meet interested students at the ASA

meetings to talk about the position, but that’s not
happening this year!

The student co-editors are responsible for a quarterly

column which can take any form the co-editors decide.
Evan Roberts, University of Minnesota This year we have had again some fantastic interviews.
eroberts@umn.edu @evanrobertsnz But this is not a required format! Going further back,
we have had student editors who have written
Welcome to the summer issue of the Medical columns on the graduate school and job search
Sociology newsletter, and for your editor the half- process in all its phases, including prelims,
way point in the term. One of the joys of this dissertations, and being an early-career teacher.
position is being involved with the work of this
section for a sustained period of time. Please email if you are interested, and if you are not
yet tired of Zoom calls, I’m always happy to chat online
Special thanks to Deborah Carr, Wan-Zi Lu, Emily too.
Parker, Theresa Morris, and Mieke-Beth Thomeer
who have contributed regular columns. And an
extra-special thanks to Shannon Monnat who
concludes her two-year term as Health Policy chair,
and has contributed detailed and topical columns
every quarter.

Thanks also to the many members who have

c o n t r i b u t e d p u b l i c a t i o n a n d c o n f e re n c e
announcements, and the special features about
conferences and other activities.

Best wishes to you all for a wonderful summer, and

my best to everyone for the many challenges the
pandemic has brought.

Wear sunscreen this summer!

Image used under Creative Commons License

https://flic.kr/p/5bLjth

Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 18

 Summer 2020 Volume 56, Issue 4

New books by section members

Tania M. Jenkins, Doctors' Orders: The Making
of Status Hierarchies in an Elite Profession.
Columbia University Press, 2020.

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/doctors-
orders/9780231189354  – use code CUP30 at
checkout for 30% discount

The United States does not have enough

doctors. Every year since the 1950s,
internationally trained and osteopathic
medical graduates have been needed to
fill residency positions because there are
too few American-trained MDs. However,
these international and osteopathic
g r a d u a t e s h a v e t o s i g n i fi c a n t l y
outperform their American MD
counterparts to have the same likelihood
of getting a residency position. And when
they do, they often end up in lower-
prestige training programs, while
American-trained MDs tend to occupy
elite training positions. Some programs
are even fully segregated, accepting
exclusively U.S. medical graduates or non-
U.S. medical graduates, depending on the
program’s prestige. How do international
and osteopathic medical graduates end up so marginalized, and what allows U.S.-trained MDs to remain
elite?

Doctors’ Orders offers a groundbreaking examination of the construction and consequences of status

distinctions between physicians before, during, and after residency training.  Tania  M. Jenkins spent
years observing and interviewing American, international, and osteopathic medical residents in two
hospitals to reveal the unspoken mechanisms that are taken for granted and that lead to hierarchies
among supposed equals. She finds that the United States does not need formal policies to prioritize
American-trained MDs. By relying on a system of informal beliefs and practices that equate status with
merit and eclipse structural disadvantages, the profession convinces international and osteopathic
graduates to participate in a system that subordinates them to American-trained MDs. Offering a rare

Tania M. Jenkins is assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina

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 Summer 2020 Volume 56, Issue 4

New books by section members

Fisher, Jill A. 2020. Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the
Testing of New Pharmaceuticals. New York: New York University
Press.

https://nyupress.org/9781479862160/adverse-events/

Imagine that you volunteer for the clinical trial of an

experimental drug. The only direct benefit of participating is
that you will receive up to $5,175. You must spend twenty
nights literally locked in a research facility. You will be told what
to eat, when to eat, and when to sleep. You will share a
bedroom with several strangers. Who are you, and why would
you choose to take part in this kind of study?

This book explores the hidden world of pharmaceutical testing

on healthy volunteers. Drawing on two years of fieldwork in
clinics across the country and 268 interviews with participants
and staff, it illustrates how decisions to take part in such studies
are often influenced by poverty and lack of employment
opportunities. It shows that healthy participants are typically
This book reveals not only how social
recruited from African American and Latino/a communities,
inequality fundamentally shapes these
and that they are often serial participants, who obtain a
drug trials, but it also depicts the
significant portion of their income from these trials.
important validity concerns inherent in this
mode of testing new pharmaceuticals.
These highly controlled studies bear little
resemblance to real-world conditions, and
everyone involved is incentivized to game
the system, ultimately making new drugs
appear safer than they really are.

A d v e r s e E v e n t s  p r o v i d e s a n
unprecedented view of the intersection of
racial inequalities with pharmaceutical
testing, signaling the dangers of this
research enterprise to both social justice
and public health.

Jill A. Fisher, Ph.D., is Professor of Social Medicine and core

faculty in the Center for Bioethics at UNC-Chapel Hill

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 Summer 2020 Volume 56, Issue 4

New books by section members

William Cockerham. 2021. Sociological Theories of
Health and Illness, Routledge.

Sociological Theories of Health and Illness published by

Routledge reviews the evolution of theory in
medical  sociology beginning with the field’s origins in
medicine and extending to its present-day standing as a
major sociological subdiscipline. Sociological theory
has an especially important role in the practice of
medical sociology because its theories distinguish the
subdiscipline from virtually all other scientific fields
engaged in the study of health and illness. The focus is
on contemporary theory because it applies to
contemporary conditions; however, since theory in
sociology is often grounded in historical precedents
and classical foundations, this material is likewise
included as it relates to medical sociology today. 

This book focuses on the most commonly used

sociological theories in the study of health and illness,
illustrating their utility in current examples of empirical
research on a wide range of topics.

The qualitative or quantitative research methods applicable to specific theories are also covered. Distinctions
between macro- and micro-level levels of analysis and the relevance of the agency–structure dichotomy
inherent in all theories in sociology are discussed. Beginning with classical theory  (Durkheim, Weber, and
Marx) and the neglected founders (Gilman, Martineau, and Du Bois), along with symbolic interaction (Mead,
Strauss) and labeling theory (Becker), and poststructuralism and postmodernism (Foucault), coverage is
extended to contemporary medical sociology. Discussion of the stress process model (Pearlin) is followed by
the social construction of gender and race and intersectionality theory (Collins), health lifestyle theory
(Cockerham), life course theory (Elder) fundamental cause theory (Link and Phelan), and theories of the
medical profession (Freidson), medicalization and biomedicalization (Conrad, Clarke), and social capital
(Bourdieu, Putnam, and Lin).

ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 46910- 8 (hbk) William C. Cockerham, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor of
ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 46908- 5 (pbk) Sociology and Chair Emeritus at the University of Alabama at
ISBN: 978- 1- 003- 04616- 5 (ebk) Birmingham
https://www.routledge.com/Sociological-Theories-of-Health-and-Illness/Cockerham/p/book/9780367469085

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 Summer 2020 Volume 56, Issue 4

Books
Steven E. Barkan. 2021. Health, Illness, and Society: An
Introduction to Medical Sociology, second edition. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538129920/Health-Illness-
and-Society-An-Introduction-to-Medical-Sociology-Second-
Edition

This engaging text provides a sociological perspective on

health, illness, and health care. Serving as an introduction to
medical sociology for undergraduate and graduate
students, it also presents a summary of the field for medical
sociologists and for public health scholars and practitioners.
A highlight of the text is its emphasis on the social roots of
health and disease and on the impact of social inequality on
health disparities and the quality of health care. The book
also critically examines health care in the United States and
around the world and evaluates the achievements and
limitations of the Affordable Care Act and other recent
health care reform efforts.

Articles
Anthony I. Barnett, Martyn Pickersgill, Ella Dilkes-Frayne, and Adrian Carter. "Neural Imaginaries at Work:
Exploring Australian Addiction Treatment Providers’ Selective Representations of the Brain in Clinical Practice."
Social Science & Medicine 255 (2020/06/01/ 2020): 112977.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953620301969.

Patricia Drentea, Heith Copes, and Jessica Valles. 2020. “Hope, Dignity, and Oral Health for Women in
Recovery” Contexts. 19(2): 62-64.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MbVfYEwhe62StPMvxVDJ6QV_9d4fSUZ9/view

Giulia De Togni, Nicola Boydell, Sarah Chan, Sonja Erikainen, Andrea Ford, Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra, David
Lawrence, Catherine Montgomery, Martyn Pickersgill, Rebecca Richards, Nayha Sethi, Julia Swallow.
"Imagining Life With “Immunity Passports”: Managing Risk During a Pandemic", Discover Society, 1 June 2020.
https://discoversociety.org/2020/06/01/imagining-life-with-immunity-passports-managing-risk-during-a-
pandemic/

Kerry Dobransky. "Reassessing Mental Illness Stigma in Mental Health Care: Competing Stigmas and Risk
Containment." Social Science and Medicine 249. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.11286.

Harris, Joseph. “Viruses Don’t Care about Borders.” 2020. Contexts. Special Issue on the Global Impact of
COVID-19: Healthcare and Critical Infrastructure Section. March 30, 2020
https://contexts.org/blog/healthcare-and-critical-infrastructure/#harris

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 Summer 2020 Volume 56, Issue 4

Articles
Harris, Joseph, and Selway, Joel. 2020. “A Scholarly Exchange: Explaining the Passage of Universal Healthcare
in Thailand.” Journal of East Asian Studies. 20(1): 99-119.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-east-asian-studies/article/exchange-explaining-the-
passage-of-universal-healthcare-in-thailand/184E03848794BD8DAD5886D7EDAAE0C8/share/
558215240cdc6ed6e88112d1bae303c263d0c1b3

Harris, Joseph. 2020. “Science and Democracy Reconsidered.” Engaging Science, Technology and Society. 6:
102-110. https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/383

Harris, Joseph. 2019. “The Politics of Expanding Healthcare Access to the Poor and Informal Sectors.”
Sociological Forum. 34(4). Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/socf.12551

Jenkins, Tania M., Grace Franklyn, Joshua Klugman, and Shalini Reddy. 2020. “Separate but Equal? The Sorting
of USMDs and non-USMDs in Internal Medicine Residency Programs.” Journal of General Internal Medicine.
35: 1458–1464. doi:10.1007/s11606-019-05573-8.

Tiffany D. Joseph. 2020. “Whitening Citizenship: Race, Ethnicity, and Documentation Status as Brightened
Boundaries of Exclusion in the U.S. and Europe.” Chapter 4 in International Handbook of Contemporary
Racisms. (Editor John Solomos). New York: Routledge Press.

Tiffany D. Joseph. 2020. “Trump’s Immigration Policies are Making the Coronavirus Pandemic Worse.” Op-ed,
Newsweek, April 24, available at https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-immigration-policies-are-making-
coronavirus-pandemic-worse-opinion-1500129.

Tiffany D. Joseph. 2020. “Unpacking the Invisible Citizenship Knapsack.” Contexts Blog Post, April 16, 2020,
available at https://contexts.org/blog/unpacking-the-invisible-citizenship-knapsack/.

Kelly Joyce, Jennifer James, & Melanie Jeske, 2020, “Regimes of Patienthood: Developing an Intersectional
Concept to Theorize Illness Experiences,” Engaging Science, Technology & Society 6: 185-192. DOI: 10.17351/
ests2020.389

Kelly Joyce & Melanie Jeske, 2020, “Using Autoimmune Strategically: Diagnostic Lumping, Splitting, and the
Experience of Illness,” Social Science & Medicine 246(February): DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.112785

Tagart Cain Sobotka and Sheridan A. Stewart. "Stereotyping and the Opioid Epidemic: A Conjoint Analysis."
Social Science & Medicine 255 (2020/06/01/ 2020): 113018.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953620302379.

Vinson, Alexandra H. & Kelly Underman (2020). “Clinical Empathy as Emotional Labor in Medical Work.” Social
Science & Medicine. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.112904

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 Summer 2020 Volume 56, Issue 4

Articles
Howard Waitzkin. 2020. "Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health," International Journal of Health Services.
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0020731420922827

Howard Waitzkin. 2020. Rinky-Dink Revolution: Moving Beyond Capitalism by Withholding Consent, Creative
Constructions, and Creative Destructions
https://mronline.org/2020/05/19/rinky-dink-revolution/ and
https://darajapress.com/publication/rinky-dink-revolution-moving-beyond-capitalism-by-withholding-
consent-creative-constructions-and-creative-destructions

Images of the Covid-19 pandemic, Spring 2020.

See other images of the pandemic for free use with attribution at https://flic.kr/s/aHsmNWX1RP

Medical Sociology Section of the ASA 24