SOC7209: Sociology of Health and Medical System
Course description
This course critiques the medical model and treats the concepts of health and illness as highly problematic, socially contextualised, and political. It gives special attention to how people express and experience their distress and the nexus between health providers and consumers of health services. The course modules include, the Political Economy of Health; the Sociology of Medicine; and, Bio-social Research.
Objective:
Over the past few decades, there has been increasing pressure from both within and outside the health establishment to examine the limitations of biomedical understanding of sickness. Secondly, adequate health care has come to be regarded as a right of all categories of people. With this background in mind, the broad objective of this course will be to examine illness/healing from a socio-cultural perspective.
· Define key concepts needed to understand the healing process and optimal relationships between health professional and their clients.
· Re-examine existing techniques and philosophies of health care and discuss how they can be modified to fit the needs of biologically and socially diverse groups of people living in a wide variety of natural environments.
· Equip students with the necessary skills that will enable them to recognize and deal with, on a theoretical and practical levels, the complex relationship between biological, social, cultural, environmental and technical factors in shaping sickness.
· Equip the students with the required skills to analyse and evaluate how health resources are delivered.
Learning outcomes
· Ability to understanding and define key concepts in the healing process
· An understanding and appreciation of optimal relationships between health professional and their clients.
· Ability to assess existing techniques and philosophies of health care.
· Ability to apply the techniques of health care under different social settings and environments.
· Skills to recognize and deal with the complex relationship between biological, social, cultural, environmental and technical factors in shaping sickness.
· Skills to analyse and evaluate how health resources are delivered.
Course content
Introduction:
1. General orientation to the course. The emerging relationship between medicine and sociology that have led to the creation of medical sociology.
2. History of medical sociology. Medical origins. Sociological origins. Anthropological origins,
Module 1: The Social Production of Disease and illness
1.1 The concepts of diseases, illness and sickness
1.2 The doctrine of specific etiology
1.3 The assumption of generic disease
1.4 Scientific neutrality of medicine
1.5 The Biomedical Model. Contrast between biomedical and other models of illness.
1.6 Alternative models of illness and its explanation. Ethno medicine and explanatory models (EMS)
Module 2: Perspectives in Medical sociology (3 weeks)
2.1 Materialist view of sickness and medicine
2.2 Critical Medial Sociology
2.3 Medical Sociology in Ecological Perspectives.
2.4 Illness, Medicine and Interpretive Sociology.
Module 3: Social Epidemiology (2 weeks)
1.1 history of Epidemiology
1.2 Key concepts and terms
1.3 History of Disease and Disease Patterns
1.4 Diseases, Diseases of development, Man-made diseases
1.5 Epidemiology of selected diseases from developing countries (e.g, Kuru, Malaria, small pox, leprosy, AIDS)
Module 4: Health and Illness Behaviour (3 weeks)
1.1 Stages of illness Experience
1.2 Parsons” “Sick role” Model.
1.3 Sociological Critique of the “Sick Role”
1.4 Machanic;s theory of illness experience
1.5 Social Networks and illness experience.
1.6 Health Service Utilisation
1.7 Major Models and Trends in Health Service Utilization variables in use of Health services
1.8 The Health Belief model
1.9 The Ethno medical.
1.10 Medical Pluralism and Hierarchy of Report
Module 5: Systems of Health Care (2 weeks)
5.1 Determinants of Health Care Systems
5.2 Free Enterprise; Welfare state; Transitional states
5.3 Case studies: The United State; Russia; Sweeden; Uganda; Colombia.
Module 6: Emerging Themes: Sociology of Health, Medical systems (2 weeks)
6.1 Changing Priorities and Current Strategies in Health care. E.g, Primary Health care, Selective Vs Comprehensive care, Maternal and Reproductive Health.
6.2 Health Care Reform. Financing, sustainability and cost recovery.
7 Medicalization of Health conditions. Pharmaceuticals and Essential drugs. The “Drugging of the third World”
Course Assessment
· Coursework assessments will comprise of quizzes given end of each module and will contribute 40% of final marks.
· The examination at the end of the semester will contribute 60% of the final marks.
References
Baer et al (1988) Introduction. Toward a critical medical Anthropology. Social Science and Medicine 23 (2) 95 – 98.
Basch, P. 1990 Textbook of International Health. New York: Oxford University Press.
Brown P. (1996) Perspectives in Medical Sociology. Waveland Press, inc. Prospect Heights, Illionois. Pp. XIX – XIV.
Brown, P. et al. (1996) disease, Ecology and Human Behaviour. In, Johnson, T. and C.B. Sargent (Eds). Medical Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Method. Praeger, New York. Pp. 183 – 219.
Conrad, P. and R. Kern (Eds.) (1994) General Introduction. The Sociology of Health and Illness: Critical perspectives. St. Martin’s Press. New York. Pp. 1 – 6.
Engel, George L. (1977) The Need for a new medical model: A Need for a new medical model: A challenge for Biomedicine. Science. 196 (4286): 129-136.
Gaines, a. D. (1992) enthnopsychiatry: The cultural construction of psychiatries. In, Ethnopsyiatries. A. Gainess (Ed.) state University of New York Press, Albany.
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Gordon Deborah (1988) Tenacious Assumptions in Western Medicine. In, Biomedicine Examined. M. Lock and D. Gordon (Eds), Klumer Academic Publishers, Holland.
Janzen, J, (1978) The Quest for Therapy: Medical pluralism in lower Zaire. Berkely: University of California Press.
Kleinman, a. (1980) Patients and Healers in the context of culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lesilie, Charles (1997) Pluralism and Integration in Indian and Chinese Medical System. In, Medicine in Chinese cultures. Edited by E. Russell Alexander at al. Washington D.C. Fogarty Centre.
Lilienfed, A.M and D.E Lilienfeld (1980) Foundations of Epidemiology. Oxford University Press. Chapter 6 – 7.
McGrath, J., Rwabukwali, C., Schumann D. (1993) Anthropology and AIDS: The Cultural Context of Risk Behaviour among Urban Baganda Women in Kampala, Uganda. Social Science and Medicine (36): 429 – 439.
Singer M. (1990) Reinventing Medical anthropology: Toward a Critical Realignment. Social Science and Medicine. 30 (2): 179 – 187.
Susser, M. (1973) Causal thinking in Health Sciences. Chapter 3. Agent, Host, and Environment as Ecological system. Oxford University Press.
Twaddle, A.C and Richard M. Hessler (1988) A Sociology of Health. Macmillan Publishing company. New York. Pp. 5 – 21
Van der Gesst, Sjaak, and S. Reynolds white Eds. (1990) the content of medicines in developing countries. Studies in Pharmaceutical Anthropology. Dordrench: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Walt Gill (1994) Health Policy: An Introduction to process and Power. London: Zed Books.
Weiss, G. L and Lyonne E. Lonnquist (1994). The sociology of Health, Healing and illness. Prentice-Hall. Englewood cliffs, New
Wolinsky, F. (1980) the sociology of Health: Principles and Issues. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. pp. 122 – 158.
Wright, P. and Treacher A. (Eds.) (1982) the problem of Medical knowledge: Examining the social construction of medicine. Edinburgh: the University of Edinburgh Press.