Welcome to the Politics of Health Encyclopedia! In MHS 1920, Politics of Health, we discuss the concepts and theories that define “health,” how health can be measured, and the role of the nation in relation to health. This is a student-created database for topics researched by Vanderbilt students in Professor Callahan-Kapoor’s Politics of Health class. Students spend around three weeks researching their topics and compile their findings in the form of an encyclopedia entry. This encyclopedia consists of more than 150 concepts from class readings as well as student-chosen topics of interest; topics range from “Pharmaceuticalization” to “Mental Illness in Minority Populations” to “Gene Therapy.”
After several semesters, the encyclopedia has grown to what it is today and now serves as a point of reference for all Politics of Health students – as one entry mentions another topic, it is automatically hyperlinked for the reader’s convenience.
As this encyclopedia grows, the entries will continue to diversify; and though there is a wide range of topics, they are all related through the politics of health and its re-occuring themes. Entries extend beyond these themes arising from classroom discussion, which highlights how large the scope of the “politics of health” is and how applicable the ideas presented in the classroom are to the real world. The word politics can seem very boxed in and stigmatic, however, this encyclopedia evidences how many different facets there are to this topic.