Berkeley Center for Social Medicine

Background image: A collage of books and publications by affiliates of Berkeley Center for Social Medicine

The Berkeley Center for Social Medicine critically engages the intersection of social systems, social difference, health and health care in the United States and across the globe. 

Founded in 2013, the Center links to the discipline of social medicine internationally by bringing together Bay Area scholars from the social and historical sciences who are working on questions related to medicine, the health sciences, public health, global health, the social structuring of suffering, violence and the body.  

Berkeley Center for Social Medicine News

The complicated role of media in motherhood

December 11, 2025

Hannah Zeavin, a faculty affiliate of the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, explores how 20th-century ideals of motherhood and new media technologies became deeply intertwined, shaping and surveilling American family life....Read more about The complicated role of media in motherhood

Global Social Medicine: A Case Study Approach

November 20, 2025

The first two articles in a year-long series in The Lancet are now published. The series, Cases in Global Social Medicine, is led and sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine (BCSM). The introduction to the series, "...Read more about Global Social Medicine: A Case Study Approach

Group-Based Integrative Pain Management

October 16, 2025

Ariana Thompson-Lastad, a faculty affiliate of the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, recently co-authored an article in the Journal of Primary Care & Community Health. The...Read more about Group-Based Integrative Pain Management

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