bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Environmental Justice and Health
Authors: Masuda Jeffrey R.
Published: February 2014

This entry provides a brief account of environmental justice scholarship in US and global contexts. It discusses the relevance of environmental justice principles to public health, focusing on its relationship to the social determinants of health, on strategies for achieving improved population health outcomes through environmental justice principles of equitable distribution, participation, and recognition, and on methodological plurality in research.
Vital Statistics
Authors: Dingwall Robert
Published: February 2014

Vital statistics are the quantitative descriptions of the births and deaths of a given population within a given territory. These data are the bedrock of a great deal of the work on public health carried out by epidemiologists, public health specialists, and other social scientists interested in the condition of those populations. In modern times, they are compiled through official registration systems in accordance with various internationally agreed protocols, such as the International Classification of Diseases, which provides for causes of death to be reported in a standard format so as to permit cross‐national comparisons. However, these registration systems face formidable challenges in applying general coding rules to particular cases which may result in systematic biases that need to be understood if the statistics are to be correctly interpreted.
Health and Marxism
Authors: Scambler Graham
Published: February 2014

Marxist studies of health, health behaviors, and health care address not only the class origins of the “misdistribution” of health, but also class‐based systems of welfare and health care. Class exploitation is regarded as the prime cause of premature mortality among disadvantaged groups. There are certainly challenges facing Marxist medical sociologists in the twenty‐first century. Foremost among these is the need to redefine understanding of the forces and relations of production in the current phase of financial capitalism.
Health and Welfare Systems
Authors: Calnan Michael
Published: February 2014

Welfare systems embrace welfare in its broadest sense and include institutions, organizations, and resources that maintain or promote health care. The rationale for exploring welfare systems tends to lie with the need to carry out comparative study. There are numerous reasons for carrying out international comparative analysis, not least to address questions such as why funding and forms of provision of welfare and health care provision have varied between countries. Another common reason relates to exploring the experiences of and/or solutions adopted by other countries and examining how the lessons learnt from others can be used to improve welfare provision, that is, policy borrowing. This approach attempts to avoid policy failure by learning from the mistakes of other countries, and can also be used as ammunition to legitimize policies.
Stress and Disasters
Authors: Willigen Marieke Van
Published: February 2014

Disasters are stressful in that they threaten lives, disrupt daily living, and uproot communities. Studies find that psychological distress is common after disasters and can (under certain circumstances) extend for long periods of time after the disaster has occurred. Yet, most people are psychologically resilient even in the face of catastrophic events. This entry focuses on research into the impacts of natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, volcanic eruptions, and floods. Disaster scholars argue that disasters are rooted in the social structure of societies; thus, impacts and responses to disasters vary by social group, circumstances, and community context. The most commonly observed psychological impacts of disasters in the literature are post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, with some attention to substance abuse. Some research has also examined physical impacts of stress after disaster, in particular myocardial infarction.
Homelessness, Medicalization of
Authors: Wasserman Jason Adam , Clair Jeffrey Michael
Published: February 2014

Homelessness is a significant social phenomenon fundamentally conditioned by poverty and class inequality. However, while homelessness is best explained by social structural conditions, it continues to be understood as a phenomenon tied to the deviant behavior of individuals. Insofar as sociology serves a critical function in identifying how social phenomena are predicated by macrolevel contexts, it serves as an important counterweight to the overemphasis on individualistic explanations of these sorts of important social issues that is particularly common in the United States. Thus, where homelessness is understood as a function of deviance, mainly addiction and mental illness, there is a critical need for the sociological perspective. This entry explores the medicalization of homelessness, particularly where understandings of homelessness are conflated with disease concepts in a way that obscures social structural influences. We conclude by discussing how medicalized understandings of homelessness not only insufficiently explain it as a social problem, but impede efforts to remediate the fundamental inequalities at its foundations.
Dirty Work
Authors: Shaw Ian
Published: February 2014

Dirty work is a concept originally developed by Hughes to explore occupations within society that are considered deviant. This has subsequently been developed to explore areas within all occupations that may be classified as “dirty work.” The entry charts the development of the concept and shows how contextually situated are definitions.
Malaria
Authors: Cormier Loretta A.
Published: February 2014

This entry describes the vector‐borne infectious disease malaria. It includes a discussion of its widespread distribution in invertebrates, the life cycle of the vector, host, and parasite, a history of the disease in human populations, disease symptomology, disease ecology, and current treatments.
Emotions, Sociology of
Authors: Turner Jonathan H.
Published: February 2014

The prominent theoretically driven research traditions in the sociology of emotions are reviewed, and statements are made on some of the enduring conceptual issues in the field of inquiry. The study of emotions emerged rather late in sociology during the 1970s: this late arrival was the result of a relative lack of attention to conceptualizing emotions during sociology's first 110 years. However, once the sociology of emotions was recognized, work in this area continued to accelerate; and today, the study of emotions is leading edge in many fields of sociological inquiry. More specifically, symbolic interactionist, dramaturgical, interaction ritual, power and status, macrolevel stratification, exchange, and evolutionary approaches to conceptualizing emotional dynamics are reviewed. Among the enduring issues briefly explored are the problems in defining emotions, the debate over a social constructionist versus a biological basis of emotions, the debate over the place of cognitions in emotional arousal, the conceptualization variants and varieties of emotional states, and emotions versus rationality.
Relative Deprivation
Authors: Ladin Keren
Published: February 2014

Relative deprivation is a term used to describe the adverse effects of social inequality on physical and mental health, well‐being, longevity, and disability. Whereas absolute deprivation is concerned with the physical implications of poverty, relative deprivation is a measure of social poverty, often resulting in social isolation, limited social mobility, physical and mental stress, low self‐worth, and an effort–reward imbalance. Recent literature supports a very robust correlation between socioeconomic position (measured by income, wealth, educational attainment, occupation class, etc.) and health. This association is so finely graded that a dose–response relationship is noted for each step up in socioeconomic status (SES). Relative deprivation theory purports that poverty alone does not account for the observed gap in health as the gradient in health is found to persist even among those whose basic needs have been met. Instead, this theory suggests that relative deprivation, embodied by psychosocial stress, leads to health disparities by influencing an individual's sense of well‐being and subsequent health behaviors.
Midwives
Authors: Sandall Jane
Published: February 2014

A new emphasis has arisen on the contribution of midwifery, supported by increasing evidence about outcomes and cost containment. However, it remains to be seen how much influence evidence has, when the design of maternity services remains an outcome of oftentimes competing welfare state interests, professional boundary struggles, and changing consumer interests surrounding pregnancy and childbirth.
Stressors, Types of
Authors: Kugelmass Heather , Lynch Scott M.
Published: February 2014

Stressors are a wide range of conditions and experiences with the potential to challenge the adaptive capacities of individuals. Stressors represent a distinct part of the stress model and come in a variety of types. As our knowledge of the stress process has increased, and the number of stressors often investigated has grown, the classes of stressors that researchers utilize have grown in number, magnitude, and complexity. The traditional distinction between acute and chronic stressors has developed into a typology that includes daily hassles, traumas, and macro‐stressors. We highlight the challenges associated with classifying stressors: most notably, avoiding the pitfalls of confounding stressors and outcomes.
Professional Ethics and Accountability
Authors: Dingwall Robert
Published: February 2014

Traditionally, health professionals’ claim to a high degree of autonomy and discretion in their practice has rested on an implicit or explicit claim that this is a necessary condition for them to work in a way that maximizes benefits for patients, clients, or users of their services. The knowledge gap, or informational asymmetry, between professionals and non‐professionals is such that their work cannot be managed or scrutinized by people who have not experienced the same socialization processes. This creates a potential for professionals to misuse their knowledge to exploit patients, insurers, or employers: professional ethics justify patient trust. However, professionals have always been accountable in a variety of other ways – and these modes of accountability have proliferated as deference has declined.
Race and Medical Experimentation
Authors: Wasserman Jason Adam
Published: February 2014

While race/ethnicity clearly constitutes more of a social construct than a biological one, in sociological terms the reification of race has promoted its utilization in a variety of social arenas, including medicine. While often considered a scientific enterprise, it is important to remember that where science is a human enterprise, it is susceptible to social biases in the same way as other social institutions. In turn, medicine, at times, has been undergirded by questionable, and sometimes plainly false, knowledge. This entry examines the role of race in medical experimentation. Medical science long held that race was a significant biological reality. This, combined with the subjugated legal and moral status of certain race/ethnic groups, led to historical injustices in medical experimentation.
Eastern and Central Europeans, Health of
Authors: Mayfield Carlene A.
Published: February 2014

The political transition into democracy led to particularly sweeping changes in Eastern and Central Europe. Variations in health status between countries and the epidemiology of disease cannot be attributed to specific, discrete factors, but rather emerge from the complex interaction of regional instability in both social and economic environments. Important health considerations include the instability of mortality and life expectancy rates, as well as the emergence of HIV as a national concern, particularly in the female population.
Postmodernity
Authors: Cockerham William C. , Wasserman Jason Adam
Published: February 2014

The term “postmodernity” literally refers to the period following modernity, in which society moved out of its post‐industrial era to the next stage of development, bringing with it new social conditions and phenomena. The sociological version of postmodern theory that developed generally held that post‐industrial society's traditional centers of authority were disintegrating and giving way to the emergence of a new social modernity – the postmodern. Postmodern social theory mandated a turning away from theorizing in terms of grand, all‐encompassing systems (metanarratives) that conceptualized the social as a totality, along with the negation of formal, positivist conceptions of social theory and the belief that the sociological classics speak to the current era. Postmodernism may be best understood as an epistemological break from modernist thinking, rooted in Enlightenment thinking. While the strength of postmodern theory lies in its depiction of the type of social change taking place at the beginning of the twenty‐first century, its greatest shortcoming was its failure to account for the shape of the oncoming society. Other strengths and weaknesses of postmodern theory are discussed, along with its reception in medical sociology and in sociology generally.
Health Care Delivery System: Russia
Authors: Cockerham William C.
Published: February 2014

This entry examines the transition of Russia's health care delivery system from its former Soviet version to today's insurance‐based approach. Accompanying this transition was a major health crisis that ranked as one of the late twentieth century's most significant public health problems. Especially affected were middle‐aged, working‐class males whose high rates of premature mortality were caused by negative health lifestyles, primarily binge drinking and high levels of alcohol consumption. The crisis has yet to be fully resolved.
Allied Health Professions
Authors: White Kevin
Published: February 2014

The allied health professions are the professions in the health care system with some measure of autonomy from the medical profession. Having said this, it is then very difficult to come up with a unitary definition since it varies enormously from country to country and even from region to region. The development of the allied health professions can be seen as one aspect of the decline of medical dominance, as previously subordinated groups of workers have developed their own educational programs, credentials, and career trajectories. Paradoxically, this professionalization is under greatest threat from the state, which is acting to standardize and routinize the training of these occupations.
Pharmaceutical Industries
Authors: Bonah Christian
Published: February 2014

Late twentieth‐century observers conceive of industries producing medicines as a central element of health care systems, essential actors in the twentieth century's epidemiological transition from acute to chronic illness, and the associated substantial increase in longevity. Moreover, the pharmaceutical industry is a prime example of a science‐based industry. Since W. H. Perkin's invention of synthetic dyestuffs in the 1850s, it has become one of the largest and most profitable of all Western manufacturing industries. This entry traces how the pharmaceutical industry has achieved this status. History and sociology have only recently turned to the topic. Since the 1970s, an ever‐growing number of critical voices have found fault with the sustained and rising profits generated by the pharmaceutical industry, especially in times of health insurance economic crisis, and in spite of the commercialization of knowingly dangerous medicaments, which have given rise to repeated drug scandals from thalidomide to rofecoxib (Vioxx); falsely innovative therapeutic agents; the pharmaceutical industry's tendency to medicalize social phenomena, including depression, hyperactivity, erectile dysfunction, and obesity; drug overconsumption issues in the global north and essential drug inaccessibility in the south, including costly HIV treatments and so‐called orphan drugs, that is, scientifically conceivable drugs that profit‐oriented pharmaceutical industries do not research or develop because they relate to economically uninteresting, low‐profit diseases.
Biosociety and Genetics
Authors: Dingwall Robert
Published: February 2014

The term “biosociety” has come into use to describe the impact of developments in cellular and molecular biology on culture and society. In the words of the editorial introduction to the first issue of the academic journal
Biosocieties
in 2006: “The drivers of these developments, and the stakes in them, are not merely scientific – they are therapeutic, economic, political, ideological and ethical … developments in genomics, stem cell research, pharmacology, neuroscience all raise questions, not just about the nature of living processes and their amenability to understanding and manipulation, but also about the forces and ambitions shaping progress in the life sciences themselves, and the ways in which the life sciences are transforming different societies, locally, nationally and globally, in a multitude of different practices from the clinic to the factory.” The so‐called genetic revolution is one dimension of this.
Problem‐Based Learning
Authors: Schmidt Henk G.
Published: February 2014

Problem‐based learning (PBL) is a method of learning and instruction popular in medical education. Students work on biomedical or clinical problems in collaboration with peers and guided by a tutor; they are supposed to learn primarily through self‐directed study. Problem‐based learning is not a single educational treatment but a conglomerate of interventions each of which is thought to foster learning. This may be the reason why different authors have tended to define the purpose of problem‐based learning differently and to stress different aspects as being crucial. First, there is the cognitive constructivist approach to problem‐based learning. The idea here is that the central goal of PBL is to help students build flexible mental models of the world. Others define problem‐based learning as a process of inquiry. According to this view, the goal of problem‐based learning is to help students learn the skill of diagnostic reasoning by mimicking the thinking processes of the expert. A third perspective stresses the fact that students in problem‐based learning have autonomy in their choice of resources and learn to show agency. In this view, problem‐based learning is a method for learning how to learn.
Geographies of Gender and Health
Authors: Thien Deborah
Published: February 2014

Geographies of gender and health examine the sociospatial dimensions of gender ideologies, expectations, and embodied practices as they intersect with places and spaces of health and health care. A major emphasis of this work is to examine the unequal spatial distribution of health outcomes, health provision, and caregiving as shaped by gender. For example, normative gender practices commonly designate domestic and familial unpaid care work as “women's work,” an assignment that frequently serves to disadvantage women and may lead to diminished health outcomes. In contrast, men are discouraged from health‐seeking behavior, an effect of hegemonic masculinity requiring men to be invulnerable that is also detrimental to health.
Slavery, Segregation, and Health
Authors: Wasserman Jason Adam
Published: February 2014

Racism has a long history that touches every aspect of the social arrangements in the United States. This includes medicine, where African Americans have historically been victimized, sometimes by direct maltreatment and sometimes by being disfranchised from opportunities to get health care and more generally to maintain health. This entry primarily covers the broader social‐structural context in which African Americana were mistreated by their exclusion from medicine and their limited social and economic opportunities. Examples of these include the segregation of hospitals and medical schools and the lack of attention to public health problems that largely affected blacks. These constitute a patterned and widespread set of experiences, less sensational, but perhaps more consequential for understanding racial disparities in health both past and present.
Medical Education, Medical Humanities, and History
Authors: Ousager Jakob
Published: February 2014

The family ties between medicine and the humanities can be traced back to Hippocrates or earlier. More recently, there has been an increased interest in including subjects or elements of teaching from the humanities in medical education. Some claim that humanistic disciplines can be used as a way of achieving or strengthening specific skills and competences that are not necessarily directly connected with the humanities as such but may be relevant for those who practice or training to practice medicine. Others claim that spending time on the humanities enables medical students to obtain a number of competences that are valuable in themselves, for people in general and for physicians and medical students in particular.
Habitus, Class, and Health
Authors: Hinote Brian P.
Published: February 2014

Habitus represents one of the most important and influential contributions of contemporary social theory, as social scientists and cultural commentators around the world have drawn extensively upon this concept to analyze and explain numerous phenomena in various settings. This entry offers an introduction to habitus as a concept, a brief explanation of how habitus fits into Bourdieu's broader analytical framework, and a specific connection between habitus and the more commonly known concept of social class. It concludes by identifying several ways in which habitus facilitates our understanding of health, lifestyles, and contemporary disease epidemiology.
Socioeconomic Status and Health Behaviors
Authors: Denney Justin T. , Krueger Patrick M. , Pampel Fred C.
Published: February 2014

High socioeconomic status (SES) groups are typically more likely than their low‐SES counterparts to avoid unhealthy behaviors such as cigarette smoking and undertake healthy ones such as nutritious eating, exercise, and weight control. This entry provides an overview of the research on the socioeconomic gradient in health behaviors.
Race and Stress
Authors: Budhwani Henna
Published: February 2014

Race is defined by physical traits associated with a given; race is based in biology. For example, African American or black is considered a racial category and is primarily identified through skin color. According to the American Sociological Association, “[r]ace shapes the way that some people relate to each other, based on their belief that race reflects physical, intellectual, moral, or spiritual superiority or inferiority.” Although race emerges from genetics and biology, it is a label. The beliefs and stereotypes associated with different races are socially constructed; therefore, they have implications for the perceptions groups have of one another and for outcomes, such as stress, which may manifest as repercussions from these perceptions.
Disease Surveillance and Global Health Security
Authors: Sellwood Chloe , Nguyen‐Van‐Tam Jonathan S.
Published: February 2014

Global health security (GHS) encompasses how international policies and activities can address the breadth of infectious disease and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) health threats and challenges. Formalized GHS activity commenced largely with the formation of the World Health Organization in 1948, and has more recently been driven by a range of emerging and re‐emerging pathogens, including the SARS coronavirus, avian influenza, bioterrorist threats, and pandemic influenza preparedness and response. International relations and health policies are becoming intrinsically linked, and accurate and timely disease surveillance, a key component of the International Health Regulations (IHR), is essential for effective action.
Stress and Religion
Authors: A. Gibson Philip
Published: February 2014

The relationship between religion and stress was a founding concern in sociology dating back to Durkheim's landmark research on suicide. The pathways through which religion and stress are connected are complicated, however, making research on the subject difficult. Existing literature demonstrates some positive influences of religious belief and participation on stress and distress, but the mechanisms of these effects are not precisely understood, nor is the research comprehensive. This entry presents several of the ways in which religion is believed to interact with stress. Unique challenges involved in the study of religion and stress are also discussed in addition to the opportunities for contemporary social scientists to make meaningful contributions to the subject.
HIV/AIDS, Health Services Utilization among People Living with
Authors: Szaflarski Magdalena
Published: February 2014

An estimated 34 million people in the world are living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The majority of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) reside in developing countries. High‐risk HIV populations include commercial sex workers, patients being treated for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) or tuberculosis, injection drug users, pregnant women, and blood donors. The treatment of HIV/AIDS is challenging. There is no cure; available therapies – principally, antiretroviral therapy (ART) – can only suppress the viral load to reduce the risk of disease progression and to prevent transmission to others. Access to ART has improved significantly, but nearly half of PLWHAs are still not receiving life‐saving treatment, and only 10 low‐ and middle‐income countries have achieved universal (80 percent) access. Several barriers to HIV/AIDS treatments have been noted; for example, many PLWHAs are not accessing ART because they are unaware of their HIV status. Research shows that bringing services closer to where people live improves access and utilization. Scaling up HIV services for special populations, such as men who have sex with men (MSMs), injection drug users, and youth, is essential for curbing the HIV/AIDS epidemics.
Biomedical Techniques and Innovations
Authors: Faulkner Alex
Published: February 2014

A myriad of new medical techniques are evolving through the biological sciences and bioengineering. Many observers predict a revolution in health care. Such technologies include genetic testing, nanomedicine, tissue regeneration, cell therapy, biosensors, and imaging techniques. Sociologists have opened the black box of biomedical technology, through case studies of techniques and eclectic conceptual development, to deconstruct their origins and the interests and expectations built into them. The socioeconomic roots of controversial debates have been uncovered, and the ways in which technologies become embedded in health care practice have been demonstrated. Sociology is increasingly investigating the global political economy of the circulation of biomedical techniques, and how they figure in or escape states’ global dynamics of governance, competition, and collaboration. Future challenges for the field include the progression toward technologies for personal disease risk prediction, understanding diversifying biomedical techniques, and the implications for health inequalities, health elites, and global health.
Mental Illness, Diagnosis of
Authors: Thompson Claire
Published: February 2014

There are currently no laboratory tests on blood or other bodily fluids for diagnosing mental illness. This is largely because the diagnosis of mental illness, unlike those of cancer or diabetes, does not involve ascertaining the presence or absence of a single biological factor. However, ascertaining a diagnosis of mental illness is important to formulating the correct form of treatment and to helping people understand how their condition is likely to develop.
Insanity Defense
Authors: Thompson Claire , Cockerham William C.
Published: February 2014

Insanity within the law is a defense to criminal charges grounded on the premise that the defendants were unable to comprehend their actions or to understand that their actions were wrong at the time of the offense – the reason being that willful intent is an essential part of most offenses. A person who is “not of sound mind” is therefore deemed not capable of forming such intent.
Health Lifestyles
Authors: Cockerham William C.
Published: February 2014

Health lifestyles are collective patterns of health‐related behavior based on choices from options available to people according to their life chances. The behaviors that are generated from these choices can have either positive or negative consequences for a person's health status, but nevertheless form an overall pattern of health practices that constitute a health‐oriented lifestyle. Health lifestyles are becoming an increasingly common form of social behavior given the limits of medicine in treating chronic illnesses like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes and the association of such diseases with unhealthy lifestyles. This entry reviews the relevant lifestyle literature and provides a health lifestyle model.
Lay Expertise
Authors: Williams Gareth
Published: February 2014

There has been a growing interest in the knowledge and skills of lay people in relation to personal experiences of illness and wider concerns. This entry explores some of the different ways in which lay expertise and lay knowledge have evolved to make sense of social and health phenomena, and some of the social and cultural changes that have an impact on lay experiences and ways of knowing. The entry concludes by arguing that this constitutes a fertile field for continuing research and discussion.
Freidson, Eliot
Authors: Milner Adrienne N.
Published: February 2014

Eliot Freidson's main contribution to sociology is his professional dominance thesis. The professional dominance thesis discusses how physicians have acquired the most professional power of any profession because they are the ultimate authority in defining what constitutes illness, who does or does not have an illness, and how to best address illness. Friedson's professional dominance thesis, his focus on the medical profession as a self‐regulating body, his concept of the lay referral system, and his application of labeling theory to illness have had a significant important impact on the field of medical sociology and continue to have important implications for the sociological study of professions.
Race and the History of the Medical Profession
Authors: Baker Robert
Published: February 2014

The modern concept of race was initially a classificatory concept introduced by the famous eighteenth‐century Swedish classifier of flora and fauna, the physician and botanist Carl Linnaeus. He distinguished types of humans according to geography and skin color, using the sort of external markers that he used to differentiate between types of flowers and trees. Unlike these classifications, however, racial classifications soon became infused with ethnic biases. This entry examines the role of racial bias on the health professions, focusing in particular on the discriminatory exclusion of Jews from the medical professions in twentieth‐century Germany and of African Americans in nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century United States. Contrasting the public and publicly proclaimed German policy of the exclusion of Jews with institutionalized racial exclusion in America, the entry probes the ironic fact that even as American medical societies officially condemned German racial exclusion of Jews they failed to recognize their own exclusionary practices with respect to African Americans. The entry concludes by noting another sad irony, that even though modern genetic science has disconfirmed Linnaeus's notion that skin color is a biologically significant marker, policies designed to rectify past racial discrimination have an unfortunate propensity to sustain the now discredited concept of “race.”
Negotiated Orders
Authors: C. J. Stevens Fred
Published: February 2014

Negotiated order involves the assumption that all social order depends on negotiation and that organizational structure and rules are no more than reflections of the constant reconstruction of this negotiated order. The view of organizations as socially constructed entities was in sharp contrast to the mainstream view of organizations as stable, self‐maintaining systems with functional demands, where those involved make efforts to achieve common goals in light of broader organizational and societal demands. Seen from this perspective, an organization is not a stable system, dominated by hierarchies, rules, and procedures, but a socially constructed order that tends toward an equilibrium. The negotiated order perspective has made a significant contribution to our understanding of organizations and occupations, by using the interactions of professions and occupations as a starting point. The perspective points to the fact that organizations are dynamic entities, constantly changing and, not least, infused by day‐to‐day interactions at the workplace.
Indians, Health of
Authors: Suminski Richard R.
Published: February 2014

Chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer are serious health problems in India. More Indians die from chronic diseases than from anything else. The chronic disease profile looks set to worsen unless effective interventions can be implemented. Such interventions should target lifestyle factors including diet, physical activity, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Current efforts have met with some success but a more substantial allocation of resources will be required.
Stress and Relationships
Authors: Redmond Deidre Lynn
Published: February 2014

When addressing the topic of stress and relationships, it is important to identify the key social roles and relationships that structure a person's identity. Family and work are life domains defined by the marital, parental, and worker roles. These social roles are beneficial to health, but they are also demanding on time and energy, which ultimately results in stress. Family relationships are particularly important to individual health, but the stress arising out of these relationships offsets the benefits of social connections. Marital stress, for example, undermines the health benefits of the intimacy and purpose typically derived from marriage. The important areas of concern for stress researchers examining marital relationships include interactions between married partners, disagreements, and the association between stress in marital relationships and marital instability.
Family and Stress
Authors: Hill Rowena
Published: February 2014

The term “family” can include many forms and adaptions of the traditional “nuclear” family that is often represented within society: kin and non‐kin family, adults, children, immediate family, and extended family. Despite the many variations, some common features of families have been established. Family is the primary social group which is usually formed by a collection of people who share some common factors; these might be biological, social, or experiential. Families usually have a structure (who does what for whom) within which processes take place (the dynamics of what is happening). These contribute to the way the family functions; family functioning is a key tool in accessing the well‐being of the family as a whole and also of those who exist within it. Family functioning represents the systems that the family members have adapted in order to organize and undertake their shared tasks, communications, activities, and procedures.
Medical Education, Sociology of
Authors: Stevens Fred C. J.
Published: February 2014

Sociologists’ interest in medical education goes a long way back. Between 1955 and 1970 there was a burst of empirical research into the processes by which medical students selectively acquire the attitudes and values of the medical profession. A range of studies demonstrated the importance of learning the rules of the game and becoming successfully socialized into the culture of medicine. These studies emphasized how the attitudes and skills students develop in medical school and during their training and internships are crucial sources for their subsequent performance as physicians. After this period the focus shifted toward the study of medical education within the broader context of health care developments. In the last two decades the waning interest of sociologists in medical education can be observed, with little pathbreaking research done. Notable exceptions are studies which draw from social theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu, and studies in the domain of professionalism, the hidden curriculum, and social network theory. Educationalists serving medical education have embraced some of the sociological theories and insights, in a blend of different disciplinary approaches.
Online Health Information Seeking and Stress
Authors: Cotten Shelia R. , Stern Michael
Published: February 2014

As the range and use of information and communication technologies increase, so does the potential to utilize these tools to acquire health information from the Internet. Unfortunately, little is known about whether online health information seeking causes stress or whether stress leads to more online health activities. This entry details estimates of Internet users, online health activities, the relationship between stress and online health information seeking, and areas of further inquiry.
Suffering among Older Adults
Authors: Rubinstein Robert L.
Published: February 2014

Suffering is a pervasive part of the human condition. From social, cultural, and medical perspectives, human suffering is often hidden under an assortment of other defined experiences, for example, colonization, marginalization, stigmatization, or illness symptomatology such as physical, mental, or chronic pain. As such, a focused examination of the condition of human suffering as a distinct entity has often been lacking. However, work in several disciplines within recent years has brought a specific focus to suffering as an object of study. As part of this effort, research has also centered on the experience of suffering in later life. Suffering can be defined as immersion in a profoundly difficult or troubling event or episode. Of critical significance to an understanding of suffering – and what makes it different from many negative experiences – is that suffering often provides a challenge to personal identity and threatens a stable sense of who one is in the world. Six negative factors relating to suffering may each form the basis of a more profound level of existential suffering. Some research on suffering in later life has focused on the relationship of suffering to both personal meaning and the experience of control.
Social Support
Authors: Cotten Shelia R.
Published: February 2014

An expansive array of research by a multitude of researchers since the early 1970s has examined the concept of social support, both as an outcome and as a predictor of varying health outcomes. Social support continues to be a main factor examined in the relationship between stress and well‐being. Unfortunately, however, there is not a clear conceptualization of social support. Prior research has contributed to a plethora of measures which all attempt to assess social support. This entry defines social support, details its dimensions, proposes an integration model, and puts forward a view for expanding the concept of social support.
Contemporary Theory
Authors: Cockerham William C. , Szaflarski Magdalena
Published: February 2014

Sociological theory emerged in response to the oncoming modern industrial era in the nineteenth century, and evolved over the twentieth century to account for the growing complexity and changing nature of late modern society. There is no general agreement in sociology about when theory moved beyond its classical phase to become “contemporary,” but the approach taken here is to review major theories representative of the twenty‐first century and those of the late twentieth century whose influence has carried over into the present and still have utility for medical sociology. Unlike medical sociology in the past, modern‐day medical sociology is rich in theory. The focus here is on those contemporary theories that have general explanatory power which can be applied to multiple topics. These include symbolic interaction, social constructionism, structuration theory, critical realism, theories of the political economy of health and feminist issues, post‐Marxism, and the work of Foucault and Bourdieu.
Socioeconomic Status and Mental Illness
Authors: Ng Edwin , Muntaner Carles , Chung Haejoo , Eaton William W.
Published: February 2014

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a complex construct that is commonly used to understand mental health inequalities. SES refers to the social relations that determine what structural locations individuals or groups hold within society, which in turn influence the exposures, resources, and susceptibilities that produce mental health inequalities. The association between SES and mental health is one of the most firmly established patterns in psychiatric epidemiology – the most privileged and deprived tend to experience the best and worst mental health outcomes, respectively. Three major sociological traditions are relevant to understanding the causal processes through which SES determines the likelihood of developing a mental health disorder. The first tradition conceptualizes SES in terms of social stratification, or the ranking of individuals into groups based on shared socioeconomic conditions. The second uses a neo‐Weberian perspective, and defines SES as being determined by social closure and opportunity hoarding, or the processes through which privileged groups restrict access to economic resources and opportunities while excluding others. The third reflects a neo‐Marxist approach, and identifies SES with domination and exploitation, or the ability of owners of productive resources to control and benefit from the labor of workers.
Deinstitutionalization
Authors: Cockerham William C.
Published: February 2014

“Deinstitutionalization” is a term referring to the release of patients from mental hospitals in the late 1950s and 1960s for what was thought to be more humane care in community settings. In the 1950s, before the introduction of newly discovered drug therapies that made deinstitutionalization possible, many mental patients lived in overcrowded and poorly furnished hospital facilities; they were treated with much pessimism and little success, and few patients with severe mental illness were ever discharged. While deinstitutionalization has not been an overwhelmingly successful policy, it has nevertheless enjoyed some successes and allowed many people with mental disorders to receive care in community settings that allow them to maintain their personal freedom instead of living their lives under the limits inherent in hospitalization. Although this may be considered positive for some, for others this outcome has meant living lonely, isolated lives in slum housing or as homeless people in extremely disadvantaged circumstances made worse by mental illness.
Asians, Health of
Authors: Chen Meei‐shia
Published: February 2014

Asia is the largest, most populous, and most culturally diverse of the seven continents of the world. It comprises 48 nation‐states with very different natural environments, political‐economic systems, historical developments, and cultures. Furthermore, the health status of the people of different Asian states varies greatly. This entry analyzes the health of Asian peoples from the historical perspective of various Asian political‐economic trajectories.
Race and Gender: Intersectionality Theory
Authors: Hankivsky Olena
Published: February 2014

There is a growing sense that current approaches to understanding health inequities are insufficient for increasing the understanding of multifactoral and multilevel complexities of health disparities and for identifying the most effective strategies to reduce them. Traditional frameworks often fragment vulnerabilities into distinct categories such as socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, geography, or disease status; prioritize one category over others; look at variables in non‐relational manners; or fail to fully consider and analyze the context and influence of social power inequities. Fully understanding health inequities requires alternative research and policy frameworks, such as those emerging from an intersectional perspective, which can investigate the interaction of numerous characteristics of vulnerable populations, not only at the individual level but also at structural levels which capture the multiple contexts that shape individual lives and health statuses.
Alcohol Use/Dependence
Authors: Roman Paul M.
Published: February 2014

The first organized use of alcohol (ethanol) within human societies predates recorded history. Essentially, all known societies have used alcohol in some form. This is because alcohol is the natural product of organic fermentation, which is produced by stored and spoiling food. The natural strength of alcohol rarely exceeds 12–14 percent by volume. This amount is typically found in wine, usually made from grapes but the potential product of fermentation of any fruit juice. Beer, produced by fermenting cooked cereal grain, rarely exceeds 4–5 percent. To produce alcohol concentrations (liquor) beyond these levels requires distillation, a technology that was not widely practiced until 400 years ago. Distillation can produce pure 100 percent alcohol, although most liquors are consumed at a 40 to 50 percent concentration. Importantly, the forms of alcohol that were easily available in nearly all societies throughout most of history were “light,” non‐distilled beverages that did not lead to rapid intoxication, or potentially to death through overdose.
Racial Disparities in Health Care Access in the United States
Authors: Mayberry Robert
Published: February 2014

Racial and ethnic disparities in health care quality are indicative of relatively poorer quality of care for racial/ethnic minority groups. They represent critical injustices when provisions of health care are unexplained by the patient's clinical needs and other determinants of health care delivery, and the benefits of health care services are not equitably realized. While health care remains suboptimal in the United States, improvement in health care quality is observed for all population subgroups. Yet, racial and ethnic disparities in health care access and quality have not shown any significant improvement. Health care disparities have discernible patterns and different putative explanatory pathways. Extricating these patterns and pathways will help to better understand why race/ethnic disparities are observed for some measures of health care quality (e.g., invasive cardiac care), but not others (e.g., cancer screening); and why health care access and quality are suboptimal for all Americans. Evidence‐based health care quality improvement, which integrates the elimination of defined racial/ethnic disparities, is the paradigm for achieving equitable best care.
Stress: Intergenerational Meaning
Authors: Yost Elizabeth A.
Published: February 2014

Stress can be defined as a physiological response to situations where individuals feel anxious or fearful from demands placed upon them. Intergenerational stress can be evaluated two ways (1) stress between generations from roles, and (2) stress passed through generations in relation to past stressful or traumatic events. Reactions from stressors can be short or long term and can have deleterious effects on both mental and physical health. This entry will discuss both approaches to intergenerational stress, with emphasis on past research.