Guides: HSOC 4528-301 : Race and Medicine in America: Home

Finding Journal Articles

These databases will identify journal articles and books on race and medicine in the United States. Look for PennText links to locate fulltext.

Sociological Abstracts
1952-present. Indexes the scholarly literature in sociology and social work.
America, History and Life
1964-present. Indexes the scholarly literature on US (and Canadian) history.
International Blbiography of the Social Sciences
1952-present. Provides international coverage for sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics. A good general bibliographic databases for the broad social sciences.
HST : History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Combines four databases : Bibliografia Italiana di Storia della Scienza, Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science, Current Bibliography in the History of Technology (Technology and Culture), and Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine.
Anthropology Plus
Combines two library catalogs that index journal articles alongside books - Anthropological Literature (Tozzer Library, Harvard University) and Anthropological Index (Royal Anthropological Institute). Includes a lot of duplication, with two sets of subject vocabularies.

Medical Databases

IndexCat
Index catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office. The predecessor to Index Medicus and MEDLINE. Be prepared to decipher journal title abbreviations.
MEDLINE
1946-present. The comprehensive database for biomedical literature, produced by the National Library of Medicine. MEDLINE and PubMed have the same content, but MEDLINE has more powerful searching capabilities.

Reference Sources

Handbooks provide chapter-length summaries of specific issues within a broader topical work. They will have good bibliographies.

The Wiley Blackwell companion to medical sociology / William C. Cockerham, ed.
Online. Wiley, 2021.
See especially, Part 3 : Health and Social Inequality.
Strategies for deconstructing racism in the health and human services / Alma J. Carten et al., eds.
Online. Oxford University Press, 2016.
Routledge international handbook of critical issues in health and illness / Kerry Chamberlain and Antonia Lyons, eds.
Online. Routledge, 2022.
Routledge handbook of health geography / Valorie A. Crooks et al., eds.
Online. Routledge, 2018.

Bibliographies are lists of works organized around a topic, sometimes with annotations.

Oxford Bibliographies : Public Health
A collection of bibliographic articles. Related OBO areas include anthropology, sociology, African American and Latino studies. See, for example:
• "Racism as a structural determinant of health" / Linnea Evans. Oxford Bibliographies : Public Health, 2022.
• "Social epidemiology" / Regina A. Galer-Unti. Oxford Bibliographies : Public Health, 2013.
• "Health disparities" / Leandris Liburd. Oxford Bibliographies : Public Health, 2015.
• "Health and medicine" / Thomas J. Ward. Oxford Bibliographies : African American Studies, 2020.
• "Latino health" / David E. Hayes-Bautista and Mithi del Rosario. Oxford Bibliographies : Latino Studies, 2016.
• "Latinos and health policy" / Amy Cabrera Rasmussen. Oxford Bibliographies : Latino Studies, 2020.

Literature reviews are a handy way to get quickly into the scholarly literature. A typical literature-review article will provide a narrative that identifies and describes dozens of journal articles and books.

Annual Reviews (ejournal collection)
A collection of ejournals that publish lengthy literature reviews with BIG bibliographies. Examples:
• "Racism and health : evidence and needed research" / David R. Williams et al. Annual Review of Public Health 40 (2019): 105-125.
• "Social foundations of health care inequality and treatment bias" / Karen Lutfey Spencer and Matthew Grace. Annual Review of Sociology 42 (2016): 101-120.
• "Is racism a fundamental cause of inequalities in health?" / Jo C. Phelan and Bruce G. Link. Annual Review of Sociology 41 (2015): 311-330.
• "US socioeconomic and racial differences in health : patterns and explanations" / David R. Williams and Chiquita Collins. Annual Review of Sociology 21 (1995): 349-386.
• "Origins of racial and ethnic bias in pulmonary technologies" / Michael W. Sjoding et al. Annual Review of Medicine 74 (2023): review in advance.
Sociology Compass
2007-present. A monthly bulletin of new research in all areas of sociological research. Not exactly a literature review journal, but it provides articles that expose new and interesting subject matters and methodologies. Example:
• "Racial/ethnic segregation and health disparities: Future directions and opportunities" / Tse-Chuan Yang et al. Sociology Compass 14, 6 (June 2020): e12794.
Other literature review examples, from searching Sociological Abstracts and Web of Science
• "Health inequalities amongst people of African descent in the Americas, 2005-2017 : a systematic review of the literature" / Sandra del Pino et al. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 16, 18 (2019), 3302.
• "Examining issues affecting African American participation in research studies" / Hsin-hsin Huang and Angela D. Coker. Journal of Black Studies 40, 4 (March 2010): 619-636.
• "Implicit bias in healthcare professionals: a systematic review" / Chloë FitzGerald and Samia Hurst. BMC Medical Ethics 18 (2017), no. 19.
• "The effect of patient race and socio-economic status on physicians' perceptions of patients" / Michelle van Ryn and Jane Burke. Social Science & Medicine 50, 6 (March 2000): 813-828.
• "A systematic review of the extent and measurement of healthcare provider racism" / Yin Paradies et al. Journal of General Internal Medicine 29 (2014): 364-387.

Finding Books

Franklin Catalog lists the millions of books, journal titles, and other materials in Penn Libraries collections. Franklin Catalog uses Library of Congress subject headings to describe books. You will see patterns in these useful subject headings:

Health services accessibility
Social medicine (i.e., Medical sociology!)
Medical policy
Medical geography
Medical anthropology
Public health--Anthropological aspects

Health and race
Health--Social aspects

Ethnic groups--Health and hygiene--United States
Minorities--Medical care
Minorities--Health and hygiene
African Americans--Medical care
African American women--Medical care
Poor--Health and hygiene
Poor--Medical care
Transcultural medical care

Racism in social services
Racism in public welfare
Discrimination in medical care
Medically underserved areas

Equality--Health aspects

Human experimentation in medicine
Sickle cell anemia--Patients--United States
Asthma--Social aspects

You can combine subject headings using Franklin Catalog's Subject Heading Keyword Search, with OR for combining synonyms and AND for combining concepts. Some examples:

("african american" OR "african americans") AND "human experimentation"

(racism OR discrimination) AND ("medical care" OR "health and hygiene")

Dissertations are book-length works that may become tomorrow's published books and journal articles. Dissertations often reproduce survey questionnaires, interview transcripts, and other primary source material. They're also a GREAT source for literature reviews.

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global
Fulltext for US and some foreign doctoral dissertations and masters theses, 1997-present with many earlier digitized works too.
HINT Unless you are searching for a very specific term (e.g., a disease or an organization), change the default field search tag to NOFT - Anywhere except fulltext. This will search within the dissertation's title and abstract only.

Narrowing down your book search results

If your Franklin:Catalog search results are overwhelming, there are some subject heading phrases that might help you maintain control. Plug these into your Keyword Expert searching with ... AND ....

Conditions and aspects

`attitudes`	`economic conditions`
`health aspects`	`history`
`intellectual life`	`legal status`
`moral and ethical aspects`	`social aspects`
`social conditions`	`social life and customs`
`politics and government`	`public opinion`
`psychology`	`psychological aspects`
`religion`	`religious aspects`
`religious life`

Methodologies and sources

`methodology`	`anecdotes`
`autobiography`	`case studies`
`correspondence`	`cross-cultural studies`
`diaries`	`interviews`
`longitudinal studies`	`newspapers`
`personal narratives`	`statistics`
`surveys`	`testing`

Representations

`... in advertising`	`... in art`
`... in literature`	`... in mass media`
`... in motion pictures`	`... in popular culture`
`influences`	`study and teaching`