Sociology of Health and Medicine - Abstracts and Full Texts

Sociology of Health and Medicine - Abstracts

Socioeconomic health inequalities among a nationally representative sample of Danish adolescents: the role of different types of social relations
P Due1, J Lynch, B Holstein and J Modvig
p.due@pubhealth.ku.dk
Study objective: To investigate the role of different types of social relations in adolescent health inequalities.
Design: Cross sectional study. Measures included family social class, indices of social relations to parents, friends, teachers, and school.
Results: Adolescents from families of lower socioeconomic position reported more physical and psychological symptoms. This ranged from 40% increased odds for multiple physical symptoms among less advantaged girls, to 90% increased odds of multiple psychological symptoms for less advantaged boys. Relationships with friends or teachers showed small social class differences, while strong and consistent social class differences were found in the ways adolescents reported their own and their parents relations to school. For example, girls from families of lower socioeconomic position were more than four times as likely to report their parents unwilling to attend school meetings (odds ratio=4.54, 95% confidence intervals: 2.68 to 7.69). Poorer relations with parents, peers, teachers, and school were all associated with worse health. Patterns of parent-child relations with the school were the greatest contributors to socioeconomic differences in physical and psychological symptoms.
Conclusions: The school is one of the first important social institutions directly experienced by children and socioeconomic differences in how adolescents and their parents relate to the school may be part of the cascade of early life influences that can lead to later social and health disadvantage.

Medicine must change to serve an ageing society
Eradicate age discrimination and increase resources
Doctors and those responsible for commissioning and shaping health services have failed to acknowledge the rapid ageing of most societies. This worldwide phenomena is unprecedented, leaving us ignorant, fearful, and reluctant to tackle it face on. A conference in London last month examined how medicine and its institutions must change to serve a growing older population while still meeting the needs of younger people. Two issues dominated: age discrimination and resources.

Theorising Indigenous health: a political economy of health and substance misuse. Health Sociology Review, Saggers, S. and Gray, D. (2002). 10, (2), pp. 21-32. [RJ380]

Abstract: For more than two decades we have been engaged in a program of research which examines the health of Indigenous people. More recently this work has focused on ways in which substance misuse affects communities, and their responses to it. Our work is framed by understandings derived from political economy, which directs attention to the web of political and economic relations surrounding individuals and social groups. We have stressed that this framework should not be interpreted in a crudely deterministic fashion, which neglects the nuances of the social determinants of health, or individual and community agency. Much of our recent work documents such agency in community-based actions throughout Australia. In this paper we examine Indigenous drinking and its consequences, outline a political economy approach to drinking, and discuss how this has informed our work. We conclude with a discussion of some criticisms of this approach and our responses. - http://db.ndri.curtin.edu.au/abstract.asp?pubid=1448

The Balance Between Group and Individual Rights
Sociology 318 - Northern Arizona University
Anne Diedrich
We live in a world of billions of people. Everyday, everything we do affects others. This is especially true with health behaviors. When someone chooses to smoke their smoke then affects the people around them as they inhale it. The health choices that a pregnant woman makes always affect the health of her baby. Individual behaviors affect the group that the individual is in in many ways. Does this affect mean that there should be regulation of individual behaviors? Do the rights of the group outweigh the rights of the individual? What is the balance between group and individual rights?
These are all hard questions to answer. For Full Paper - http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~and3/WebWizard/portfoliodoc1.html

Inequalities in women's health
The research has examined the factors influencing women's health, highlighting the extent to which paid employment for women is a source of health benefit or role strain. Women's health is shown to be influenced by their marital and parental roles, their participation in paid employment, and material circumstances, such as their class and housing tenure. This work has compared women's health in Britain, Finland, Sweden and Norway, contrasting the different levels of employment participation of women in each society. The research has also examined whether women's own occupational class or their husband's class is more closely associated with their health status. This research is based on the secondary analysis of large government survey data. - http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/research/12.html

The Rhetoric of Health Technology: The Microprocessor Patient Card.

Author(s): Godin, B.. Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to integrate rhetorical studies into the sociology of technology by showing how the use of discourse to enroll actors in a health technology

http://ideas.uqam.ca/ideas/data/Papers/fthuqamcr96-01.html