COVID-19 has focused global attention on disease spread across borders. But how has research on infectious and noncommunicable disease figured into the sociological imagination historically, and to what degree has American medical sociology examined health problems beyond U.S. borders? Our 35-year content analysis of 2,588 presentations in the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Section on Medical Sociology and 922 articles within the section’s official journal finds less than 15 percent of total research examined contexts outside the United States. Research on three infectious diseases in the top eight causes of death in low-income countries (diarrheal disease, malaria, and tuberculosis [TB]) and emerging diseases—Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)—was nearly absent, as was research on major noncommunicable diseases. Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) received much more focus, although world regions hit hardest received scant attention. Interviews suggest a number of factors shape geographic foci of research, but this epistemic parochialism may ultimately impoverish sociological understanding of illness and disease.

COVID-19 已将全球注意力集中在跨境传播的疾病上。但是，传染病和非传染性疾病的研究在历史上是如何成为社会学想象的？美国医学社会学在多大程度上研究了美国境外的健康问题？我们对美国社会学协会 (ASA) 医学社会学部分的 2,588 篇演讲和该部分官方期刊中的 922 篇文章进行了 35 年的内容分析，发现不到 15% 的研究考察了美国以外的背景。研究低收入国家前八位死因中的三种传染病（腹泻病、疟疾和肺结核[TB]）和新兴疾病——埃博拉病毒、中东呼吸综合征（MERS）和严重急性呼吸综合征（SARS） )——几乎不存在，对主要非传染性疾病的研究也是如此。人类免疫缺陷病毒/获得性免疫缺陷综合症（艾滋病毒/艾滋病）受到了更多关注，尽管世界上受灾最严重的地区很少受到关注。访谈表明，许多因素塑造了研究的地理焦点，但这种认识上的狭隘主义最终可能会削弱对疾病和疾病的社会学理解。