Contributions, Constraints, and Facilitations for Sustained Engagement of Anthropology in Medical Education

Anthropologists are being called upon to reconfigure a more humanistic medical school curriculum, to refocus on clinical patient care, elucidate patient life situations in family and community, highlight inequalities in health, distribution of health services, and caring for culturally diverse patients, as well as informing government policies. In this chapter, we assembled the major contributions of anthropology in medical education, the constraints encountered in educating physicians, and ways to facilitate impact and influence the future training of anthropologists, physicians, and health professionals. Major contributions include ethnography, engaging communities, understanding the socio-cultural context of health, communication and collaboration skills, program development and management. Learning from the quarter century of experiences reflected by the chapter authors, we present what anthropologists, as well as the field of medical education, can do better to ensure more successful and sustained engagement of anthropologists in medical education. Dialogue between anthropology and medicine needs to occur at higher levels to address the constraints identified in this chapter and facilitate the continued engagement of anthropologists in medical education. This fulfills a primary purpose of applied medical anthropology, to improve health outcomes for populations by changing health care delivery for the better by strategically influencing the training of physicians.