An Introduction to Sociology
Third Edition
Kerry Ferris and Jill Stein
Chapter 14: Health and Illness

Why Study Health and
Illness?
• Our bodies are social objects
• understand the role that health (and illness) plays in our lives as social beings.
• Health (and illness) are social constructs
• what it means to be healthy or sick is determined by a society
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Types of Illnesses
• Acute diseases
• sudden onset
• may be briefly incapacitating
• curable or fatal
• Chronic diseases
• develop over a longer period of time
• may not be detected until symptoms occur
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Leading Causes of Death in U.S., 1900-2004

Social Construction of Health and Illness
• Medicalization
• Process where some issues that used to be seen as personal problems are redefined as medical issues
• DSM and changing definitions of psychological disorders
• Other conditions?
• ADHD, alcoholism, pregnancy and child birth, death
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Approaches to Medical
Treatment
• Curative or crisis medicine
• healthcare that treats a problem after it has already started
• Preventative medicine
• health care that tries to prevent or delay a problem
• can include making lifestyle changes
• Palliative care
• health care that focuses on symptom and pain relief
• not intended to provide a cure
• typically used for critically ill or dying patients.
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Issues in Medicine and
Health Care
What other options are there?
• Complementary medicine
• treatments, practices, or products that can be used with conventional Western medicine
•
Alternative medicine
• treatments, practices, or products that can be used instead of conventional Western medicine
•
Integrative medicine
• combines conventional medicine with complementary practices that are proven to be safe and effective
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Issues in Medicine and
Health Care (cont’d)
• Health Care Reform
• Current media coverage in culture wars
• The premise is that we need to provide better, more affordable health care to all people
• The Affordable Care Act
• Eliminates rescission
• a policy that allows insurance companies to cancel a person’s coverage after they get sick
• Problems:
• Who pays for this?
• Is it ethical to require people to purchase insurance or take care of themselves?
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“Sicko” by Michael Moore (2007)
• Looks at health care crisis in U.S.
• Focus on for-profit health insurance and pharmaceutical business
• Compares health care systems in other nations
• Canada, UK, France,
Cuba
• Controversy over accuracy of claims

Epidemiology
• Epidemiology is the study of disease patterns to understand illnesses, how they spread, and how to treat them.
• An epidemic happens when a significantly higher than expected number of cases of a disease occurs within a population.
• A pandemic is when a higher than expected number of cases of a disease also spans a large geographic region, as in multiple countries or continents.
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Social Inequality, Health, and
Illness
• Epidemiologists and sociologists have noticed some trends: not all people have equal access to health or health care.
• Socioeconomic status (SES) impacts people’s ability to access better heath care, tests and medications, and also to afford better nutrition.
Higher SES individuals often live longer and feel better than lower SES individuals.
• Food deserts are poor, urban neighborhoods without grocery stores. This makes finding healthy food options difficult.
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Social Inequality, Health, and
Illness (cont’d)
• Race and gender are compounded by income, as minorities and women are more likely to be in poverty.
• Minorities are more likely to be exposed to harmful surroundings; men are more likely to hold hazardous jobs.
• Deprivation amplification
• occurs when the risks we already have because of our background or heredity are amplified by social factors.
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Medicine as a Social
Institution
• The American Medical Association, through its standards and regulations:
• transmits norms and values of medicine and medical knowledge.
• regulates, licenses, and legitimizes practitioners.
• polices itself and encroachment on its power.
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Medicine as a Social
Institution (cont’d)
• Doctor-patient relations are greatly influenced by the structure of the institution.
• The way that we interact with doctors is what gives them status and power —the norms of the situation emerge from the way we behave!
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Medicine as a Social
Institution (cont’d)
• The sick role describes actions and attitudes expected from someone who is ill.
• Functionalist Talcott Parsons suggests that being sick is a form of deviance (it’s different from the norm).
• You often get excused from your normal responsibilities
• but you have new responsibilities, like seeking treatment and trying to get better.
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Issues in Medicine and
Health Care (cont’d)
• Cultural competence is when a person’s cultural background is acknowledged as part of the treatment process .
• This is important because a patient’s beliefs will shape their approach to health care.
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Issues in Medicine and
Health Care (cont’d)
• In an effort to eliminate disorders, eugenics is an attempt to manipulate the gene pool to
“improve” humans through medical science.
• In using processes like eugenics, it is important to consider bioethics —the moral or ethical issues related to scientific or medical advancements.
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So What? Why Study Health and Illness?
• Understanding the link between social structures and the individual helps us understand process and health outcomes.
• Thinking about our values and cultural context helps us understand the way people perceive the health of individuals, society, and the planet.
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This concludes the Lecture
PowerPoint presentation for
Chapter 14
The Real World
AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
3 rd Edition
Kerry Ferris and
Jill Stein
Visit the StudySpace at: http://wwnorton.com/studyspace
For more learning resources, please visit the StudySpace site for
The Real World, 3e.
© 2012 W. W. Norton Co., Inc.
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