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Teaching Biomedical Policy to Undergraduates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Robert H. Blank
Robert H. Blank*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and Public Affairs Research, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 83843
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Abstract

Biomedical choices are emerging as critical policy issues of the 1980s. Political pressures for cost containment, trends toward corporate medicine, and continuing problems of access and equity ensure biomedical issues a prominent place on the policy agenda. Students of political science should be familiar with the array of biomedical technologies that currently are challenging the tenets of medicine as well as the capacity of political institutions to resolve the resulting policy dilemmas. Based on this, a course in biomedical policy is overdue. This article outlines a course which is designed to clarify the public policy dimensions of biomedicine and develop analytical skills in the students so that they can better cope with these issues of public and personal importance. It describes some of the approaches and methods that I have found useful and summarizes a few of the problems one might expect to encounter in teaching biomedical policy.

Type
Specific Courses in Politics and the Life Sciences
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , August 1986 , pp. 67 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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References

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