Social Forces/Clinical Cases

NOTE: This event is also being offered as a live ZOOM webinar. If you prefer that option, .

Sir Michael Marmot—preeminent epidemiologist at University College London, renowned for his work exposing the social determinants of health—leads this event that introduces a new series from Cases in Global Social Medicine. This series centers real clinical cases from around the world that together form a practical social medicine toolkit.

Each case traces a clinical course shaped by social forces, introduces a social theory concept to make sense of those forces, and distills actionable implications for clinicians, public health practitioners, health system leaders, and policymakers.

Designed for scholars and practitioners of medicine, public health, the social sciences, and related fields, the event emphasizes how social analysis can sharpen diagnosis, guide care delivery, and inform structural intervention across clinical settings.

Experts will then present cases from the California/Mexico border and from the Sahrawi refugee camp in Algeria, followed by a keynote by Sir Marmot and an audience Q&A.

Carlos Martinez, Shamsher Samra, Todd Schneberk, and Hannah Janeway will discuss a case from the Tijuana border in which an asylum seeker from Ghana crosses the US-Mexico border without documentation to receive necessary clinical care, only to be placed in a migrant detention facility. The authors of the paper—”Structural intercompetency: an asylum seeker with abdominal pain in Tijuana, Mexico”—discuss this case as emblematic of the harms that permeate the experiences of marginalized, including migrant, populations.

Salek Ali Mohamed Elabd and Maria Carrion will discuss the case outlined in the paper “Improvisation in contexts of infrastructural violence: a physician practising medicine in Sahrawi refugee camps.” From a snake bite to a complicated delivery, improvisation becomes key to effective medical care while providing medical care without electricity or standard supplies, such as gloves, bandages, or splints.

Reception to follow.

Co-presented by UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, and the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

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Host or Publisher UC Berkeley School of Public Health