The rapid growth of British medical sociology in the 1960s was reflected at the institutional level in the establishment of research centres at the University of Aberdeen, Bedford College in London and University College of Swansea.
Although there were other multi-disciplinary centres with a medical sociology component, such as the Nuffield Centre for Health Services Research in Leeds, the Social Medicine and Health Services Research Unit at St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School and the Health Services Research Unit in Canterbury, the three medical sociology research centres gave the subject a new prominence. But none of the centres now exist in their original form.
Indeed for a variety of reasons, including the rise of younger more powerful rivals - such as health economics – and the recent stress on the value of inter-disciplinary working, there are currently no major single-subject medical sociology units in the UK. The core of the Aberdeen unit survived for many years as the (re-located) MRC Institute of Medical Sociology at the University of Glasgow. However, it has recently been re-formed as the MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit.
- The MRC Medical Sociology Unit, Aberdeen
- The Social Research Unit, Bedford College, London
- The Medical Sociology Research Centre, Swansea
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