Introduction

Please click here to see Sociology department information.

Enhancing the health and quality of life for individuals and communities are central goals to societies across the world. Medical sociology is a subfield devoted to the study of population health, health care systems and policy, and the social dimensions of illness and healing. Medical sociologists study the causes of health inequalities, social constructions of health and illness, origins of medical authority, doctor-patient relationships, community influences on health, and the social forces that affect policy.

The Sociology Department's Community Health and Medicine Certificate provides training in the core research methodologies and theories of medical sociology, examining individual experience, institutional structures, laws and policies that affect health, and broader systems of inequality that lead to unequal rates of illness and access to care. This certificate provides depth of training in these areas and is ideal for students interested in graduate-level study and social research on health and medicine as well as those interested in careers in public health, health care services, and non-profit organizations.
 
Upon successful completion of the certificate, students will:

• Articulate the central explanations for historical shifts in disease, including neighborhood effects and behaviors that may increase the risk of disease and mortality

• Identify social factors that contribute to population health inequalities, including race, ethnicity, gender, class, immigration status, sexuality, or disability

• Understand the social influences that shape medical authority, knowledge, and patient experiences with illness and treatment

• Be able to use different methodologies to understand the social aspects of health and medicine

• Know how to conduct original research, analyze policy, and evaluate community needs for organizations devoted to improving population health

Program Delivery

• This is an on-campus or online program.

Declaring This Certificate

​Students interested in completing this certificate should complete this form: CLAS Undergraduate Certificate Intent to Declare Form, which requests that the certificate be added to your student record. Once added, you will be able to run a certificate degree audit. The certificate degree audit should be used in collaboration with the Certificate Advisor to ensure successful completion of the requirements.

Students should then work with Maren Scull (maren.scull@ucdenver.edu) – the certificate advisor, to ensure completion of all certificate requirements.

Eligibility: While housed in Sociology, the study of health and medical issues is a multidisciplinary field that draws from diverse liberal arts disciplines, including Anthropology, Communications, Psychology, and History. So, CU Denver undergraduate students in any discipline can enroll in the certificate program. This certificate is also available to non-degree-seeking students who already have earned a BA or BS degree, either at CU Denver or elsewhere.

Completing This Certificate

Students must also complete the CLAS Undergraduate Certificate Completion Verification Form, before graduation, in order to confirm completion of their certificate. The certificate advisor will confirm that your certificate has been successfully completed, and will work with campus partners to apply the certificate to your transcript.

Students must fill out the Certificate Completion Form before the deadlines below, to ensure the certificate is applied to your transcript correctly. If you are a non-degree seeking student, please fill out this form in the term in which you intend to complete your certificate.

Spring semester – April 1
Summer semester – July 1
Fall semester – November 1

These program requirements are subject to periodic revision by the academic department, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences reserves the right to make exceptions and substitutions as judged necessary in individual cases. Therefore, the College strongly urges students to consult their advisor to confirm the best plans of study before finalizing them. 

General Requirements

Students must satisfy all requirements as outlined below and by the department offering the certificate. 

• Click here for information about Academic Policies.

Certificate Requirements

1. Students must complete a minimum of 15 credit hours from the approved courses below.

2. Students must complete a minimum of six upper-division (3000-level and above) SOCY credit hours.

3. Students must earn a minimum grade of C- (1.7) in all courses that apply to the certificate and must achieve a minimum cumulative certificate GPA of 2.0. Courses taken using P+/P/F or S/U grading cannot apply to certificate requirements.

4. Students must complete all credits applied to the certificate at CU Denver. (If students have completed a course required for the certificate elsewhere, they may add the needed credits in the form of additional elective credits drawn from the approved elective courses.)

Certificate Restrictions, Allowances and Recommendations

1. The certificate will be awarded at the end of the semester in which the student completes all required courses for the certificate.

Course List

Code	Title	Hours
Complete the following required courses: 1		11
SOCY 3115 & SOCY 3119	Quantitative Methods & Analysis and Qualitative Methods 1
SOCY 3440	Medical Sociology
Complete two of the following elective courses:		6
SOCY/WGST 3010	Sociology of Human Sexuality
SOCY 3040	Drugs, Alcohol & Society
SOCY 4050	Health Disparities
SOCY 4110	Sociology of Health Care
SOCY 4220	Population Change and Analysis
SOCY/WGST 4270	Social Meanings of Reproduction
ANTH 3045	Cannabis Culture
ANTH 4010	Medical Anthropology: Global Health
ANTH/PBHL 4080	Global Health Practice
ANTH 4290	Anthropology and Public Health
ANTH 4300	Immigrant Health
ANTH 4600	Medical Anthropology
COMM 3500	Introduction to Health Communication
COMM 4500	Health Communication
COMM 4525	Health Communication and Community
COMM 4550	Rhetorics of Medicine & Health
COMM 4558	Digital Health Narratives
COMM/PBHL 4620	Health Risk Communication
ECON 4660	Health Economics.
ENGL 4755	Illness & Disability Narrative
ETST/PBHL 3002	Ethnicity, Health and Social Justice
GEOG 3501	Geography of Health
GEOG 4235	GIS Applications in the Health Sciences
GEOG 4710	Disasters, Climate Change, and Health
HEHM 3100	Foundations of Health Humanities
HIST 3606	Science, Technology, and Society in the Modern World
HIST/WGST 4345	Gender, Science, and Medicine: 1600 to the Present
HIST 4348	Mind and Malady: A History of Mental Illness
PBHL 1001	Race, Gender, Class, & Health
PBHL 3010	Human Sexuality and Public Health
PBHL 3030	Health Policy
PBHL 3041	Health, Culture and Society
PBHL 3051	Mental Illness and Society
PBHL 3070	Perspectives in Global Health
PBHL 3081	Health in the City: Urban Health
PBHL 3091	Live Long and Prosper: Public Health & Aging
PBHL 4020	Global Health: Comparative Public Health Systems
PBHL 4040	Social Determinants of Health
PBHL/ANTH 4090	Psychedelic Anthropology
PHIL 3550	Philosophy of Death and Dying
PHIL 4242	Medicine, Health Care, and Justice: Bioethics
PSCI 4330	U.S. Health Policy
PSYC 2205	Lifespan Developmental Psychology for Health Majors
PSYC 3262	Health Psychology
PSYC 3265	Drugs, Brain and Behavior
PSYC 3305	Psychopathology
PSYC 3822	Aging, Brain and Behavior
Total Hours		17

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Students may take two approved methods courses in their major discipline, one on quantitative methods and one on qualitative methods. Alternative courses may reduce the required course credit hours from 11 to 9.

• Examples of SOCY 3115, substitutions may include ECON 3801 Introduction to Mathematical Economics, ECON 3811 Statistics with Computer Applications, GEOG 2080 Introduction to Mapping and Map Analysis, GEOG 4080 Introduction to GIS, MATH 2830 Introductory Statistics,  PHIL 2441 Logic, Language and Scientific Reasoning, PHIL 3440 Introduction to Symbolic Logic, PSCI 3011 Research Methods, PSYC 2090 Statistics and Research Methods, PSYC 3090 Research Methods in Psychology.
• Examples of SOCY 3119 substitutions may include COMM 4221 Research Methods: Qualitative, PBHL 4031 Ethnographic Research in Public Health. 

To learn more about the Student Learning Outcomes for this program, please visit our website.