Health

Health Introduction

The Sociology of Health looks at how social life and society impact on the health of individuals. It considers, for example, how what we define as ‘healthy’ and ‘normal’ rather than ‘sick’ or ‘abnormal’ is socially determined.

Sociology of Health

There is a wide range of background material on medical sociology to be found on the BSA website here:

Discover More The Development of Medical Sociology in Britain

This section begins by covering key areas in the social construction of health. This includes defining health and wellbeing, the biomedical model, the social health model, the healthcare system and the social model of disability. Next this area covers the unequal distribution health chances. Here it focuses on what are health chances? Then, social class and health, deprivation and conception, ethnicity and health inequalities, international comparisons, clinical commissioning groups and inequalities in access. Next we offer resources on the nature and distribution of mental health. Here we cover: cultural differences in mental health and adolescent mental health. Finally we focus on the global pharmaceutical industry. we offer material covering the selection and presentation of the content of the news. Here we consider how the news distorts our worldview, followed the case of the Chinese media and Hong Kong protests, and then we tackle the issue of setting the agenda. Then we look at media representations of ethnicity and Islamophobia, followed by gender representations, and then in more detail gender representations and the 2015 General Election and the media and older women. Finally we look at the relationship between the media and its audiences by considering media violence, children and advertising, models of media influence, and finally, the media, folk devils and moral panics.