Sociologists propose a different cause. They examine patterns within society, and they seek social rather than biological answers and suggest that the differences in health and illness between different groups within society are influenced by social, economic, cultural and political factors. It is from these observations that sociologist believe that “being ill is not a simple thing”. The state of our health is very important to us, we spend a lot of time and money on trying to stay healthy, but what do we mean by “Health”? The World Health Organisation 1955 (WHO) describes heath as “Not the mere absence of disease but total physical, mental and social wellbeing”.
Health geography can offer a spatial understanding of a population’s health, the distribution of disease in an area, and the environment’s result on health and disease. Health geography also deals with accessibility to health care and health care providers. This is also considered a sub discipline of humane geography; nevertheless, it requires a perceptive of the other fields such as epidemiology, climatology. Although health care is a great public superior, it is not pure. However, it is not equally available to all individual.
As illness and its treatment affect the psychological, social and economic wellbeing, as well as the biological integrity, of individuals, any definition should be all encompassing while allowing individual components to be delineated. This allows the impact of different disease states or interventions on overall or specific aspects of QoL to be determined (Wimberly, 2010). P.517 The term “quality of life” is used to indicate the general well-being of people and societies. It often is associated with the term "standard of living," but the two do not necessarily mean the same. A standard of living merely is the evaluation of the wealth and employment status of person in a society.
Models of Health According to the World Health Organisation, “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” (World Health Organisation, 2011) There are two main models of health which reflect different perspectives. These models are known as the social model of health and the medical model of health. The medical model of health focuses more on the cure for an illness, whereas the social model of health concentrates on the origins of the illness rather than the cure such as class, gender and ethnicity. (HSC, 2009) In the medical model of health, the main focus is on a person functioning correctly physically and defines bad health and illness as the presence of disease. The medical model looks at the body as a machine, where if it were to break down, a doctor would take on the role of an engineer and attempt to fix it.
Part 3: Determinants of health There are many factors that can determine the health of people. Lalonde’s concept of four influences on health went much further than attempting to improve health by curing illness and disease. Things have moved on apace with the realisation that many factors can and do affect peoples health and wellbeing. Dahlgren and Whitehead’s multifactoral approach to the determinants of health show that there are many influences on health and also differentiates between individual and social factors depicting this diagrammatically as a series if layers that can be peeled away (Earle, 2007. P72).
5. Social and economic factors which influence health The impact of social and economic factors on the health of individuals is well recognised and understood by the Health, Social Care & Well-Being Partnership, and is considered in the Needs Assessment. Most local authority services impact on health in some way and the first Health, Social Care and Well-being Strategy recognised the role of services such as social care, housing, economic development, education, and transport. But there are many others such as street cleaning, refuse disposal, building regulations which can also affect people’s health. This strategy once again prioritises a number of key influential factors which impact health in a significant way.
This is also said to have a significant impact both on peoples’ health status and mortality rates. Primary health care services will focus on better health for a population, and actively work to reduce health inequalities between different groups. The Treaty of Waitangi is a key document of Maori health which states that the Crown has an obligation to ensure Maori have a health status which is at least equal to that of non-Maori (WAVE, 2001). Unfortunately this is not currently the case. The mortality rate caused by potentially preventable
Explain the reasons for the differences in the health around the world. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines health as a “state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity”. The levels of health vary all around the world due to many reasons. This can include the climate which can affect people’s lifestyles and therefore affect health. It also may be due to the development of a country, LEDCs and MEDCs both play an important role when seeking the differences in health all around the world.
A.M.Clow Defining health, illness and disability. This assignment will be based on key sociological concepts of Health and illness. Explain what is meant by the terms health, illness and disability: People usually perceive their day to day 'normality' as healthy and when their body differs form this they may consider themselves 'ill' The definition of healthy, in regard to what it says in the dictionary is 'in a good physical or mental condition; in good health' Oxford dictionary (2011) Illness is often seen as when you have something wrong with you, either physically or mentally. Examples of illnesses can include 'the flu', 'Meningitis' or 'Anorexia' . A disability is often regarded as a state of which, something is wrong with either your physical or mental well being, and this disables you from doing normal everyday activities.
Assessing, planning, implementing and evaluating a Health Promotion activity Introduction: This essay will give a systematic account of a Health Promotion (HP) activity, which was focused on the awareness of stress and its prevention. It will analyse the assessment of the health need and how the activity was planned, implemented and then evaluated to determine if the anticipated outcome was achieved. The World Health Organization (WHO, 1948) defined health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. In 1986, it added that health is a resource for everyday life, and not the objective of living, a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities (WHO, 1986). However, Seedhouse (1986) suggested that health can best be described as providing the foundation by which human achievement can be attained; it is an instrument, agency, method, or course of action employed to attain some object or bring about some benefiting results, rather than a fixed condition or status, to which someone might aspire so that, with the appropriate resources, people are more easily enabled to achieve their potential.