SOC 318: A New Lens on Health

By Anthony Martin

A photography professor and student stand in front of a projected image. The professor points to the photo and critiques it.

July 1, 2025

SOC 318, Social Networks and Health, explores how social networks influence health through creative assignments including photo scrapbooks and fiction writing. The course was created under the direction of Kelly Joyce, PhD, professor of sociology and principal investigator of a Drexel-led collaboration with Northeastern University and Monmouth University. The team at Drexel was awarded a Colonial Academic Alliance IN/CO Award, one of two awarded last year, to create multidisciplinary teams of visual artists and teach them how to visually investigate and represent mental health and wellbeing while drawing on social scientific knowledge of illness and health disparities. This project addresses some of higher education’s most pressing challenges like making course content relevant to the 21st century, supporting diverse learning styles, and supporting students as they grapple with health challenges during tumultuous times. Joyce worked alongside Sociology Department Head and Professor Emmanuel Koku, PhD, Photography Professor Kylie Wright and Creative Writing Professor Dan Driscoll to design SOC 318 as part of this overarching project. In the blog post below, Philosophy, Politics and Economics major Anthony Martin discusses his experience as a student in this course.

Entering winter term as a sociology minor, I needed a 300-level sociology class to take. Only one was open: SOC 318, Social Networks and Health with Emmanuel Koku, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Sociology. I entered the course with ordinary expectations but was blown away when I saw the syllabus. Rather than being test- and essay-heavy, the syllabus indicated that half of our grade would be determined by photography and storytelling assignments.

The class touched on topics very close to my heart, including mental health and isolation, healthy behaviors and stigma surrounding chronic illness. By doing creative assignments rather than formal essays, I was challenged to find a unique lens to portray health topics and their connection to social networks. How could I photograph my mother’s experience with insomnia? How could a smoker quit if everybody close to him smokes? How could someone with terminal cancer manage his illness?

close up of a small figure of a lion sitting on a reflective floor Each week, we took two photos of a health topic for our photo scrapbook assignment. We used VoiceThread to view and reply to other students’ contributions, allowing us to see how our classmates view health, illness and networks. While some topics were easy to express with photos of friends, including social connections and emotions, others required more thought, including chronic illness and stigma. The first image, a bedside window, chronicled my mother’s pervasive insomnia. The photo displays her perspective when she cannot sleep restfully, and the second, pillows blocking a door, symbolizes her overwhelming urge to sleep which isolates her from friends and family. I also displayed how someone experiences cancer using a broken lion. Cancer appears visually, including hair loss, and this difference creates stigma.

Our first story focused on health behaviors and how social networks influence them. This assignment focused mainly on social contagion, the spread of behaviors by imitating others, and norms, behaviors considered to be appropriate. My story focuses on someone living in a small network with strong ties where the norm is smoking. Social contagion in his network results in him smoking, but he vows to quit after his mother dies. He struggles until he finds two non-smoker friends, where he is exposed to a healthier norm, advice and social support.

Our second story was a pick-your-path paper on chronic illness and social networks, focusing on stigma and biographical disruption, the disruption of one’s life and self-perception due to illness. We were tasked with exploring all potential network-informed paths a character can take in their illness. My work centered on someone’s battle with terminal cancer. My character considered whether he should seek treatment, travel a thousand miles for better treatment or try a clinical trial. His initial reluctance to seek treatment was based on stigma and his loss of identity: with cancer taking his hair and favorite hobby, he feared he would be stigmatized and lose his self-identity. His family’s support and his economic status helped him travel to participate in a clinical trial that had the potential to provide better treatment.

I learned how influential one’s network is in determining their health. If your friends are happy, or even your friends’ friends, you are much more likely to be happy; this is called emotional contagion. The same can be said for health behaviors: if the norm in your network is to exercise, you are more likely to exercise as well. However, norms can be harmful and create stigma against members with chronic illness, mental health conditions, or HIV. I learned how easy misinformation can spread on social media through echo chambers, groups consisting of only like-minded people. Echo chambers and misinformation can be fixed by adding a person with different beliefs into this network.

Analyzing social networks has significant power in administering health interventions, such as healthy vegetable intake or having PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis, a medication taken to prevent HIV infection) access. Unlike traditional public health campaigns, social network interventions emphasize existing connections and the flow of information between individuals and other networks. These interventions include identification, identifying influential members of a network to spread new health resources, and alteration, removing ties between people or adding ties to isolated individuals.

This course reshaped how I see health and social networks and helped me express my newfound creativity in unique ways. I encourage all students studying sociology, and even more so students with a passion for health, to take this course!