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Primary Submission Category: Social/relational factors
Who teaches health services and policy researchers how to theorize?
Authors: Natalie Bradford, Taylor Rogers, Alysha Garcia,
Presenting Author: Natalie Bradford*
Put simply, a theory is an explanation. Thus, to theorize is to explain. Half of the foundational public health learning objectives the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) requires accredited public health doctoral programs to assess are about explaining the effect of cultural, economic, environmental, political, and social factors on population health. In other words, theory and theorizing, especially social theory and sociological theorizing, are foundational knowledge for public health researchers. However, CEPH’s most recent accreditation criteria do not explicitly mention theory once.
Health services and policy research (HSPR), a subfield of public health, focuses on the ways health care access, cost, and quality are affected by individual and contextual factors including social and structural factors. Two of the authors are HSPRers who recently graduated with doctoral degrees in HSPR and received backlash for engaging in sociological theorizing and centering critical social theory in our dissertation research. In our experience, public health doctoral students, especially in HSPR programs, must find courses outside their discipline to learn about social theories and how to theorize.
This descriptive study examines the extent to which 237 CEPH accredited HSPR doctoral programs include courses on social theory and sociological theorizing. Our results reveal curricular gaps in HSPR doctoral programs that may impede the advancement of knowledge and action on social and structural determinants of health care (equity). Higher education institutions across the world, including schools of public health, are currently restricting their course offerings in response to governmental and organizational political demands. Investigating the absence of social theory and theorizing in HSPR doctoral programs may contribute to work that disrupts these trends, challenges epistemic oppression, and supports transdisciplinary modes of knowledge construction.