ABSTRACT
This project began in 1995 with a relatively simple goal: to learn something about the first hand realities of socialist health systems before socialism becomes completely extinct. This desire coalesced into a research plan featuring an ethnographic study of Cuba’s family doctor program. The specific goals of the project developed from a review of academic literature, nearly all of which described the 1959 revolution and transition to socialism in Cuba as leading to dramatic health improvements on the island as well as great innovations in clinical care. These health improvements had been described quantitatively, in the form of improved population health statistics, but never qualitatively, in the form of ethnographic interviews, participant observation or other first hand experience in Cuban health clinics. My dissertation research was intended to remedy this oversight by exploring the qualitative dimensions of Cuba’s transformations in health and medicine since 1959.
