Howard Waitzkin, Distinguished Professor
(Ph.D, M.D., Harvard University)
Office: SSCI 1070
(505) 277-0860
Fall 2008 Office Hours:
|
|
Howard Waitzkin, Distinguished Professor(Ph.D, M.D., Harvard University) Office: SSCI 1070 (505) 277-0860 Fall 2008 Office Hours: |
Howard Waitzkin is Distinguished Professor, Departments of Sociology, Family and Community Medicine, and Internal Medicine, University of New Mexico. He received his PhD (sociology) and MD degrees from Harvard University and obtained his subsequent clinical training as a resident and fellow at Stanford University and Massachusetts General Hospital. His work has focused on health policy in comparative international perspective and on psychosocial issues in primary care. He coauthored the proposal for a single-payer national health program that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and later was introduced in the U.S. Congress. He has been involved in advocacy for improved health access and currently is conducting studies of Medicaid managed care in New Mexico, the diffusion of managed care to Latin America, and global trade and public health, supported by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the World Health Organization, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the United Nations. His work on patient-doctor communication and psychosocial issues in primary care has been funded by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Waitzkin has received recognition as a Fulbright New Century Scholar, fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, recipient of the Leo G. Reeder Award of the American Sociological Association for Distinguished Scholarship in Medical Sociology (highest career achievement award in the social sciences pertinent to medicine), and recipient of the Jonathan Mann Award for Lifetime Commitment to Public Health and Social Justice Issues from the New Mexico Public Health Association. He is the author of four books, including The Politics of Medical Encounters: How Patients and Doctors Deal With Social Problems (Yale University Press, 1991), The Second Sickness: Contradictions of Capitalist Health Care (Rowman and Littlefield, updated edition, 2000), and At the Front Lines of Medicine: How the Health Care System Alienates Doctors and Mistreats Patients... And What We Can Do About It (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001, paperback edition, 2004) and more than 180 articles and chapters.
At the University of New Mexico, he has taught courses on medical sociology, globalization and health, health communication, public mental health, comparative international health systems, social medicine in Latin America, and the first seminar in the new B.A.-M.D. Program (“Contours of Health in New Mexico”).
He sees patients clinically and teaches in internal medicine and family medicine at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center and the Embudo rural health center of El Centro – Health Centers of Northern New Mexico.