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This article is about a mode of scholarly practice we call critical social science with public health. The article responds to our dissatisfaction with established approaches to social science engagement with public health that have developed out of Straus' early distinction between sociology in and of medicine. By critical social science with public health we mean a set of research practices that orients to epistemological and political differences between social science and public health as productive opportunities. We draw on Mouffe's notion of agonism to ground our argument conceptually and on our collaborative research with tobacco control to substantively illustrate our case. As we imagine it, critical social science with public health unsettles knowledge relations that position social science either as a conceptual resource for public health or as a source of negative critique of public health activities. Critical social science with public health engages directly with public health actors, while remaining committed to the specificity of social science theory and methodology. It aims to transform public health, often by seeking to lessen the harmful effects of public health practice, while, at the same time, contributing to critical social science scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It has been well documented that interdisciplinary, comprehensive pain education can foster positive pain beliefs among medical students, in addition to improving students' abilities to diagnose and treat pain. Though some work has been done to quantify the number of hours of pain education students receive, the content itself has received little attention. Aims: This study seeks to identify what medical students learn about chronic pain throughout an undergraduate medical degree program in Ontario. Methods: Three undergraduate medical schools in Ontario were selected on the basis of variety in curricular structure and instructional methods. Written documents comprising the formal curriculum were analyzed through qualitative and quantitative content analysis. These findings were compared with promising practices from the pain education literature. Results: The three curricula studied here dedicate the bulk of pain education to three topics: pain mechanisms, pain management, and opioids and addiction. The curricula vary considerably in organization of content and hours of pain training. All three curricula were found to contain negative pain beliefs that characterize pain patients as difficult, overwhelming, and unrewarding to work with. Two of the medical schools studied here do not have a pain curriculum. Conclusions: The results of this study indicate a need for medical schools to develop comprehensive, interdisciplinary pain curricula. Though increasing the number of hours of pain training is crucial, equally imperative is a consideration of what, and how, students learn about pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]