Abigail Neely

April 7, 2023 - 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Abigail Neely
Abigail Neely
Dartmouth College
Social Medicine from the South: Lessons for the Age of Global Health

There has been a recent uptick in interest in social medicine – the combination of clinical care and an attention to the social determinants of health – worldwide.  In this talk, Abigail Neely asks what we can learn about the possibilities and limitations of social medicine from the people who lived in the catchments of one of its most important origin sites, Pholela, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.  By understanding social medicine from Pholela, Neely opens up important questions about what constitutes both medicine and social life in Pholela and beyond.  The result is a story of multiple actors – people, microbes, political-economy, and ancestors, to name a few – working together to shape both community health and the scientific practices developed to address it.  In telling this story of social medicine, Neely challenges global health practitioners to recognize the multiple realities their patients live in and to make space for healing beyond scientific social medicine.