Experiential Education Abroad: A Comparative Health Care Systems Program

For the past five summers, Emory University's sociology department has been sponsoring a comparative health care systems program based in London, England. As an attempt to integrate experience in another society with classroom activities, this program might serve as a model for other teachers interested in the development of similar programs. The course objective, simply put, is to have students approach health care through a sociological perspective. More specifically, it intends for students to understand the delivery of health services as a subsystem, closely tied to the larger political, economic, and cultural system of a society. The comparison of two societies (in this case, the United States and Britain) enables students to see how variation in the health delivery systems stems from differences in the larger organization of society and its peculiar evolution of social institutions. The first-hand contact