„The Lancet’s Cas­es in Glob­al Social Med­i­cine: a new ini­tia­tive explor­ing how social forces shape health, ill­ness, and care across diverse glob­al contexts”

Each case inte­grates med­ical insight with anthro­pol­o­gy and social sci­ence the­o­ry to pro­vide crit­i­cal, action­able tools for clin­i­cians, pub­lic health prac­ti­tion­ers, and policymakers.

This series will be launched across three lead­ing institutions:

UC Berke­ley (Berke­ley Cen­ter for Social Med­i­cine) – 13 April 2026
April 13 in Berke­ley: The Lancet Glob­al Social Med­i­cine Series Kick-Off with Sir Michael Marmot

Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go (Neubauer Col­legium for Cul­ture and Soci­ety) – 16 April 2026
April 15 in Chica­go: The Lancet Glob­al Social Med­i­cine Series Kick-Off with Sir Michael Marmot

Uni­ver­si­ty of Barcelona (Hub for Glob­al Social Med­i­cine) – 5 May 2026
May 5 in Barcelona: The Lancet Glob­al Social Med­i­cine Series Kick-Off with Fer­nan­do Simón

All events will be acces­si­ble in per­son and via livestream or record­ings, enabling glob­al par­tic­i­pa­tion. The series con­venes an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary group of clin­i­cians, schol­ars, and practitioners.

The Cas­es in Glob­al Social Med­i­cine series presents real clin­i­cal cas­es from around the world, each illus­trat­ing how social deter­mi­nants, such as inequal­i­ty, migra­tion, struc­tur­al vio­lence, and access to care, direct­ly shape clin­i­cal outcomes.

Keynotes

The events will fea­ture keynote address­es by Sir Michael Mar­mot (Berke­ley and Chica­go) and Fer­nan­do Simón (Barcelona), both of whom are glob­al lead­ing fig­ures in the study of social deter­mi­nants of health, high­light­ing how social con­di­tions fun­da­men­tal­ly shape health out­comes and why address­ing them is essen­tial to clin­i­cal care and pol­i­cy. These events are designed for schol­ars and prac­ti­tion­ers in med­i­cine, pub­lic health, and the social sci­ences, as well as any­one inter­est­ed in advanc­ing health equi­ty through inter­dis­ci­pli­nary collaboration.

Dis­cus­sions will include some of the five already pub­lished cases: 

Case 1

Title: Med­ical com­part­men­tal­i­sa­tion: a patient with chro­mo­some 22q11.2 dele­tion syn­drome in Japan(link is external)
Authors: Kiy­oto Kasai; Yousuke Kumaku­ra; Junko Kitana­ka; Shin-ichi­ro Kuma­gaya; Scott D. Stonington

Case 2

Title: Struc­tur­al inter­com­pe­ten­cy: an asy­lum seek­er with abdom­i­nal pain in Tijua­na, Mexico(link is external)
Authors: Car­los Mar­tinez; Shamsh­er Sam­ra; Todd Schneberk; Han­nah Janeway

Case 3

Title: Lin­guis­tic prag­ma­tism: a woman with pro­gres­sive abdom­i­nal pain in Thailand(link is external)

Authors: Scott Ston­ing­ton; Preeyanoot Surinkaew; Thi­dathit Prachanukool

Case 4

Title: Impro­vi­sa­tion in con­texts of infra­struc­tur­al vio­lence: a physi­cian prac­tis­ing med­i­cine in Sahrawi refugee camps(link is external)

Authors: Salek Ali Mohamed Elabd; Larous­si Mohamed Salem; Theodore L Michaels; Dahaman Bachir Hama­di; Raabub Mohamed-Lamin Meh­di; María Car­rión; Seth M Holmes

Case 5

Title: Medico-legal entan­gle­ment: a woman with abdom­i­nal pain in Peru(link is external)

Authors: Michele Heisler; Mar­vel Celeste Sabi­no Pre­tel; Zoe Boudart; Lutz Oette

We warm­ly encour­age you to join us, either in per­son or online, for this impor­tant glob­al conversation

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One-day sym­po­sium on „Long Covid and Soci­ety” (in-per­son and virtually)

April 20, 2026
Colum­bia University 

The con­ver­sa­tion fea­tures soci­ol­o­gists, his­to­ri­ans, anthro­pol­o­gists, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy stud­ies schol­ars, patient advo­cates, clin­i­cians, and sci­en­tists work­ing around issues relat­ed to Long Covid’s impact on social inequal­i­ties. We will also fea­ture researchers from Brazil and France to pro­vide glob­al per­spec­tives on Long Covid.

Speak­ers for the day include Lar­ry Au, JD Davids, Abi­gail Dumes, Gil Eyal, Emi­ly Lim Rogers, Emi­ly Menden­hall, David Scales, Meli­na Sher­man, Pierre Robic­quet, Andre Luiz Sica de Cam­pos, Renan Gonçalves Leonel da Sil­va, Ilana Löwy, Julia Moore Vogel, and more.

Learn more and reg­is­ter: https://longcov.id/society

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Invi­ta­tion for open pan­el “Demo­c­ra­t­ic Hori­zons: Hype, Spec­u­la­tion, and the Space for Cri­tique in Bio­med­ical Futures.”
2026 4S Conference
Toron­to, Canada
Octo­ber 7–10, 2026

Sub­mis­sion due date: April 30, 2026. More infor­ma­tion at: https://www.4sonline.org/accepted_open_panels_toronto.php

We wel­come con­tri­bu­tions that address the gov­er­nance and polit­i­cal econ­o­my of bio­med­i­cine and the life sci­ences, includ­ing emerg­ing biotech­nolo­gies and ELSI research. Bring­ing togeth­er per­spec­tives on pow­er, tem­po­ral­i­ty, and the pol­i­tics of knowl­edge pro­duc­tion, the pan­el seeks to explore how more inclu­sive and reflex­ive demo­c­ra­t­ic hori­zons might be imag­ined and enacted.

Con­venors: Alber­to Apari­cio, Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Med­ical Branch; Andrew Mur­ray, Uni­ver­si­ty of Pennsylvania 

Key­words: Genet­ics, Genomics, Biotech­nol­o­gy; Eco­nom­ics, Mar­kets, Value/Valuation; Med­i­cine and Healthcare

The pan­el descrip­tion is as follows:

What val­ues will guide the future of bio­med­i­cine? STS schol­ar­ship shows that future expec­ta­tions are per­for­ma­tive, reor­ga­niz­ing the present by con­struct­ing visions of where sci­ence and soci­ety are head­ed. Today, these per­for­ma­tive con­struc­tions are pro­found­ly shaped by per­va­sive finan­cial log­ics in bio­med­i­cine. Twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry tech­no­log­i­cal opti­mism is dif­fi­cult to dis­en­tan­gle from hype and spec­u­la­tive val­u­a­tion that frame inno­va­tion as moral­ly urgent, even sal­va­tion­ary. This opti­mism shapes diverse emerg­ing areas of bio­med­ical tech­nol­o­gy: pre­ci­sion med­i­cine, cell and gene ther­a­pies, genome edit­ing, assist­ed repro­duc­tion, and AI-enabled diag­no­sis and drug dis­cov­ery. Advo­cates for these tech­nolo­gies promise to solve social and polit­i­cal prob­lems and cast uncer­tain­ty and con­tes­ta­tion as tem­po­rary obsta­cles on the path to progress.

This pan­el attempts to ground bio­med­ical hype in the every­day work of future-mak­ing. It asks, how are bio­med­ical and health futures being pro­duced and imag­ined, by whom, through what mate­r­i­al-dis­cur­sive infra­struc­tures, and with what con­se­quences? What tools does STS offer for analyzing—and poten­tial­ly reshaping—cycles of hype, solu­tion­ism, and clo­sure? We invite papers that attend to how bio­med­ical futures become cred­i­ble and investable: fund­ing prac­tices; fore­cast­ing and bench­mark­ing; demon­stra­tions and pro­to­types; pol­i­cy roadmaps; clin­i­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry work; moon­shot ini­tia­tives; and data-dri­ven research infra­struc­tures. We also invite con­tri­bu­tions that the­o­rize how broad val­ues like “democ­ra­ti­za­tion” and “inclu­sion” are defined, claimed, and con­test­ed in future-ori­ent­ed bio­med­ical projects. We are espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in method­olog­i­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal insights into work­ing against the grain of total­iz­ing tech­no­log­i­cal­ly deter­min­ist futures, exam­in­ing how alter­na­tive val­ues are artic­u­lat­ed, trans­lat­ed into gov­er­nance, or dis­placed by entre­pre­neur­ial and finan­cial ratio­nales. Final­ly, we wel­come con­tri­bu­tions will­ing to stake empir­i­cal­ly informed nor­ma­tive claims to more just bio­med­ical futures. Across cas­es, the pan­el will inter­ro­gate bio­med­ical futures as instru­ments of author­i­ty in the present and ask what it would mean to fore­ground val­ues beyond mar­ket growth in techno­sci­en­tif­ic futures.

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