ABSTRACT
The importance of social determinants on health has been consistently highlighted in public health debates. However, this has not been the case in the sphere of medical or public health education. This review paper aims to discuss the status and problems associated with teaching social and behavioural sciences in medicine and public health programs in India. A country like India requires a medical / public health manpower that is responsive to social reality and sensitive to the role of social determinants in shaping health and health-inequity. Although social and behavioural sciences form a part of the curriculum in undergraduate and postgraduate medical, public health and health management programs, the space made available for such are limited. The problem rests on the institutional structures through which these programs are offered and on issues such as the way medicine is practiced vis-à-vis the patient and overriding emphasis on doctors in professional hierarchy in public health practice and research. In most medical institutions social and behavioural sciences (SBSs) are taught by people with no formal training in these disciplines. Correspondingly, the priority given to students is too low. Absence of efforts to make a tangible connection between social science learning and medical / public health practice, lack of well-defined career opportunities and professional dominance of mainstream medical disciplines over others are some of the reasons for this low priority. Problems also reside in the degree of heterogeneity in content, vastness of scope, diversity in perspectives within each discipline, and a lack of standardized curriculum and reading materials.
ABSTRACT
Traditionally, qualitative studies are founded on interpretative and constructive epistemology. The process of data collection in these studies is longer and intensive. This helps to build a strong rapport with the community, hence enabling to capture the field as naturally as possible. These characteristics provide an ample scope to take care of quality and validity of data. However, in applied situations, data collection is often a truncated activity. This robs away a number of taken-for-granted strengths of traditional qualitative research methods: No time is spent on rapport building; holism is left behind, instead we engage in selection; we focus narrowly on specific phenomenon of concern, divorced from its context; analysis does not evolve out of an iterative process. In this paper, we aim to discuss some of the issues related to rigor and quality of such studies and strategies available to address them.