Overview

  • Dr. Jason Adam Wasserman is associate professor of biomedical science at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, where he focuses on social and behavioral science, medical humanities, and clinical bioethics. He also holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Pediatrics at Beaumont Health. He has previously held faculty positions in the Department of Sociology at Texas Tech University and the Department of Bioethics at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences. His scholarly work has focused on the medicalization of homelessness, the sociological impacts of the epidemiological transition on medicine, and the influences of neighborhood infrastructures and community networks on health outcomes among the urban poor. He works as an advocate for persons experiencing homelessness and serves on the board of directors of HOPE Adult Shelter in Pontiac, Michigan.

    Dr. Wasserman recently published Social and Behavioral Sciences for health professionals (with Dr. Brian P. Hinote; Rowman and Littlefield, 2017). He also authored At Home on the Street: People, Poverty, and a Hidden Culture of Homelessness (Lynne Rienner 2010), with Jeffrey Michael Clair, Ph.D., as well as more than 50 peer reviewed articles in journals such as Social Science and Medicine, Hastings Center Report, JAMA-Pediatrics, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, American Journal of Bioethics, Journal of Medical Ethics, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, International Journal of Obesity, and Qualitative Research. His book, At Home on the Street, was awarded honorable mention, (1st runner up) for the Annual Book Award from the Association for Humanist Sociology. Additionally, he has served as Associate Editor for Blackwell’s Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behavior, and Society and in 2015, he won the departmental award for Educational Innovation and Educational Research.

    Dr. Wasserman frequently gives invited talks on contemporary issues in health and medicine, bioethics, homelessness, and medical education. He can be reached at wasserman@oakland.edu.

    • Selected Publications

    Academic Article

    Year Title Altmetric
    2021 Prevalence of traumatic brain injury among the guests at a low-barrier homeless shelter.  BMC Research Notes.  14. 2021
    2021 On Triggering and Being Triggered: Civil Society and Building Brave Spaces in Medical Education 2021
    2021 The capacity to designate a surrogate is distinct from decisional capacity: Normative and empirical considerations.  Journal of Medical Ethics.  2021
    2021 Three Kinds of Decision-Making Capacity for Refusing Medical Interventions 2021
    2020 The Irrelevance of Origins: Dementia, Advance Directives, and the Capacity for Preferences 2020
    2020 When Do Pediatricians Call the Ethics Consultation Service? Impact of Clinical Experience and Formal Ethics Training.  Ajob Empirical Bioethics.  11:83-90. 2020
    2020 Responding to Unprofessional Behavior by Trainees-A "just Culture" Framework.  New England Journal of Medicine.  382:773-777. 2020
    2019 Pediatric assent and treating children over objection.  Pediatrics.  144. 2019
    2019 Treatment Over Objection—Moral Reasons for Reluctance.  Mayo Clinic Proceedings.  94:1936-1938. 2019
    2019 Guidance and Intervention Principles in Pediatrics: The Need for Pluralism 2019
    2019 A Pilot Study Examining the Effects of Educational Setting and Stress on Multitasking Among Medical Students.  Medical Science Educator.  29:139-148. 2019
    2019 Vaccine Education, Reasons for Refusal, and Vaccination Behavior.  American Journal of Preventive Medicine.  56:359-367. 2019
    2019 Capacity for Preferences and Pediatric Assent Implications for Pediatric Practice.  Hastings Center Report.  49:43-51. 2019
    2018 Placebo Analgesia as Nocebo Reduction 2018
    2018 The value of parental permission in pediatric practice.  JAMA Pediatrics.  172:613-614. 2018
    2018 Qualitative Analysis Reveals Complex Patterns of Medical Student Experiences in the First Dissection.  Medical Science Educator.  28:359-365. 2018
    2018 Capacity for Preferences: Respecting Patients with Compromised Decision-Making.  Hastings Center Report.  48:31-39. 2018
    2017 Harm and Parental Permission: A Response to Our Critics 2017
    2017 Reasons to Amplify the Role of Parental Permission in Pediatric Treatment 2017
    2017 Nonmaleficence, Nondisclosure, and Nocebo: Response to Open Peer Commentaries 2017
    2017 When Respecting Autonomy Is Harmful: A Clinically Useful Approach to the Nocebo Effect 2017
    2017 Epistemic cognition in medical education: a literature review.  International Journal of Medical Education.  8:1-12. 2017
    2016 Prevalence of nasal colonization by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in persons using a homeless shelter in Kansas City.  Frontiers in Public Health.  4. 2016
    2016 Experimental evidence showing that physician guidance promotes perceptions of physician empathy.  Ajob Empirical Bioethics.  7:135-139. 2016
    2016 Differences in Emotional Experience and Coping with Human Cadaver Dissection Between a Sample of US and Lebanese Medical Students: A Pilot Study.  Medical Science Educator.  26:203-206. 2016
    2016 Attitudes toward euthanasia: A comparative study of university students in Iran and the United States 2016
    2015 Response to Stephens and Heitman 2015
    2015 Walking During Leisure-Time in Relation to Perceived Neighborhoods.  Environment and Behavior.  47:816-830. 2015
    2015 Moral Reasoning among HEC Members: An Empirical Evaluation of the Relationship of Theory and Practice in Clinical Ethics Consultation 2015
    2015 Playground safety is associated with playground, park, and neighborhood characteristics.  Journal of Physical Activity and Health.  12:402-408. 2015
    2015 Perceived neighborhood size: Implications for physical activity-environment research.  Journal of Physical Activity and Health.  12:282-288. 2015
    2014 Bicycling policy indirectly associated with overweight/obesity.  American Journal of Preventive Medicine.  47:715-721. 2014
    2014 Community development corporations could potentially improve research on causal associations between environmental features and physical activity.  Journal of Physical Activity and Health.  11:1373-1378. 2014
    2014 Personality Factors and Attitudes Toward Euthanasia in Iran: Implications for End-of-Life Research and Practice.  Death Studies.  38:91-99. 2014
    2014 A multi-level analysis showing associations between school neighborhood and child body mass index.  International Journal of Obesity.  38:912-918. 2014
    2014 Nonmedical use of stimulants among medical students 2014
    2014 On art and science: An epistemic framework for integrating social science and clinical medicine 2014
    2014 The religious person revisited: cross-cultural evidence from the HEXACO model of personality structure.  Mental Health, Religion and Culture.  17:24-29. 2014
    2013 Attitude Toward Euthanasia Scale: Psychometric Properties and Relations With Religious Orientation, Personality, and Life Satisfaction 2013
    2013 Response 2013
    2013 The insufficiency of fairness: The logics of homeless service administration and resulting gaps in service.  Culture and Organization.  19:162-183. 2013
    2013 Relations between perceptions of environmental features and physical activity.  Perceptual and Motor Skills.  117:49-64. 2013
    2012 Park quality in racial/ethnic minority neighborhoods.  Environmental Justice.  5:271-278. 2012
    2012 Bibliometric measures and National Institutes of Health funding at colleges of osteopathic medicine, 2006-2010 2012
    2012 The "Homeless Problem" and the Double Consciousness.  Sociological Inquiry.  82:331-355. 2012
    2011 Comment on Russell Schutt's review of at home on the street: People, poverty, and a hidden culture of homelessness (C.S., January 2011, Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 100-01) 2011
    2011 Six in one hand, half a dozen in the other: An ontological content analysis of radical Islam and the Christian right 2011
    2011 Chronic illness as incalculable risk: Scientific uncertainty and social transformations in medicine.  Social Theory and Health.  9:41-58. 2011
    2011 Housing patterns of homeless people: The ecology of the street in the Era of Urban Renewal 2011
    2011 The medicalization of homelessness and the sociology of the self: A grounded fractal analysis.  Studies in Symbolic Interaction.  37:29-62. 2011
    2009 Picture and social concept: A fractal-concept analysis of advertising art.  Visual Communication.  8:427-448. 2009
    2009 Problematics of grounded theory: Innovations for developing an increasingly rigorous qualitative method.  Qualitative Research.  9:355-381. 2009
    2009 But where do we go from here: A reply to Tomso on the state and direction of postmodern theory.  Social Theory and Health.  7:78-80. 2009
    2008 The social psychology of amateur ethicists: Blood product recall notification and the value of reflexivity.  Journal of Medical Ethics.  34:530-533. 2008
    2008 Insight on Demand: Teaching Social Science Using Heat-Thinking Analysis of Visual Imagery.  Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy.  5:134-148. 2008
    2007 Rasing the ivory tower: The production of knowledge and distrust of medicine among African Americans.  Journal of Medical Ethics.  33:177-180. 2007
    2007 Developing, integrating, and perpetuating new ways of applying sociology to health, medicine, policy, and everyday life.  Social Science and Medicine.  64:248-258. 2007
    2005 A scale to assess attitudes toward Euthanasia 2005
    2005 Racial differences in attitudes toward Euthanasia 2005

    Chapter

    Year Title Altmetric
    2013 Reflexive modernity and the sociology of health.  215-232. 2013

    Research Overview

  • health and medicine, bioethics, homelessness, and medical education

    • Full Name

  • Jason Wasserman