Using Anthropological Perspectives to Integrate Health Equity Across a Family Medicine Residency Program in New Mexico

Abstract

Family medicine began as a specialty dedicated to the holistic care of the whole patient in their family and community context. However, as health care in the United States has become increasingly technological and bureaucratic, family physicians and family medicine educators find it increasingly challenging to integrate the social dimensions of health into their practice and teaching. Professional organizations that evaluate graduate medical education increasingly recognize the need to expand the scope of medical training to address the social context of health. Family medicine residency programs are developing models for how to expand the curriculum in residency training to include social determinants of health, but few explicitly draw on anthropological frameworks. In this chapter, we present an example of how anthropology can collaborate with related fields, such as public health and social work, to contribute to innovative curricular development that supports active residency training in social determinants of health and health equity. We discuss the components of our curriculum, which was shaped by critical medical anthropological perspectives; challenges to implementation; and some lessons learned that might help other anthropologists engage with graduate medical education in the future.