bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Health Care, Commercialism in
Authors: Guseva Alya 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
Commercialism in health care is an application of operating and managing principles typically found in business and commerce (financial incentivizing, profit‐making, competition, marketing/advertising, and focus on the bottom line) to health care delivery. The US health care system ranks the highest on commercialism among Western industrialized democracies. Commercialism poses a threat to medical professionalism, patient care, and even the integrity of science, which is a foundation of our trust in medicine and medical professionalism. The downsides of commercialism are not confined to the for‐profit health sector, as private not‐for‐profit and public institutions are forced to compete with for‐profit health care providers and to emulate their strategies. Commercialism in health care may also increase health care costs. While it encourages profit‐making among health care providers and insurers, the nature of health care service is such that patients are limited in their ability to exercise their power as consumers, which leads to overuse of services, high costs, and variable quality.
Health Belief Model
Authors: Green Edward C. , Murphy Elaine 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
The health belief model became one of the most widely recognized conceptual frameworks of health behavior, focusing on behavioral change at the individual level. The model suggests that decision‐makers make a mental calculus about whether the benefits of a promoted behavior change outweigh its practical and psychological costs or obstacles. That is, individuals conduct an internal assessment of the net benefits of changing their behavior, and decide whether or not to act. The model identifies four aspects of this assessment: perceived susceptibility to ill‐health (risk perception), perceived severity of ill‐health, perceived benefits of behavior change, and perceived barriers to taking action. The concept of self‐efficacy, or the perceived ability to actually take a recommended action, was later recognized as an important component or factor.
Home Care Workers
Authors: Denton Margaret , Barken Rachel 
Published: February 2014

AbstractHome care workers are a key component of the formal home health and social care workforce. They work under the supervision of a health care professional or under the direction of a client. The location of their work may vary from a client's home to a supportive housing environment. They provide a range of services including personal care, light housekeeping, clinical care services, and delegated acts. The majority of workers are women and middle‐aged, and many are migrant workers. They tend to work part‐time, with low pay and few benefits. Recruitment and retention of home care workers is an issue. Their jobs expose them to many occupational health and safety hazards. However, many home care workers gain satisfaction in their work and the caring relationships they have with their clients.
Physician Assistant Profession
Authors: Van Vught Anneke J. A. H. , Van Den Brink Geert T. W. J. , Harbert K. , Ballweg R. 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
Physician assistants (PAs) are health care professionals who, in some countries, are authorized to practice medicine as part of a team that includes physicians. PAs deliver a broad range of medical and surgical services that are typically performed by physicians. PAs work in hospitals, clinics, and a variety of other health facilities, and exercise autonomy in medical decision‐making as directed by their supervising physician. A period of intense classroom and clinical training precedes the granting of a license to practice as a PA. The profession was created to improve and expand health care. The concept gained acceptance and backing in the United States, as early as the 1970s, as a creative solution to physician shortages. Since then PAs have been increasingly employed and are now found worldwide. Understanding how PAs are utilized is important to international health policy. Several studies in the United States and the Netherlands are currently investigating the efficiency and effectiveness of employing PAs.
Health Care Delivery System: Canada
Authors: Bourgeault Ivy Lynn 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
Canada's health care delivery system is a set of loosely coordinated provincial and territorial systems of hospital and medical care insurance. The means by which the provincial and territorial health care systems are coordinated is through a series of joint financing initiatives with the federal government. The principles of health care in Canada include universality, accessibility, comprehensiveness, portability, and public administration. Structurally, health care in Canada includes coverage of the costs of the most expensive form of care – hospitals and physicians’ services. It is little surprise, therefore, that cost controls have become an issue. The accommodations made to establish public health care in Canada also serve to institutionalize the status quo of medical dominance with doctors as the gatekeepers to access many aspects of the system.
Health Care, Consumerism in
Authors: Guseva Alya 
Published: February 2014

AbstractIn its most basic form, health care consumerism stands for the central role of patients in making decisions about the course of their care (self‐determination), after they have been provided with, or have accessed, information about the risks and benefits of treatment, and have given their mandatory informed consent. A broader consumerist approach advocates for patient‐centered health care, where the quality of the health care service is determined by whether the patient's needs, as defined by the patient, have been adequately met. Consumerism is closely tied to commercialism, in which consumer choice is a powerful mechanism to promote greater competition between providers in the health care field, and to deliver high‐quality health care services. The most radical brand of health care consumerism aims to make patients more responsible for the cost of their care in an effort to incentivize them to use health care resources more efficiently. The US health insurance industry has recently started to market consumer‐directed health plans and health savings accounts. While patient‐centeredness is becoming a fundamental principle of health care delivery in a democratic society, allowing health care utilization to be driven by consumer demand, especially if treatment options are framed as financial decisions, may jeopardize patients’ health and the health of their communities.
Race and Nursing
Authors: Klaus Susan F. , Williams Charlott 
Published: February 2014

AbstractAccording to the most recent National Sample Survey from the US Department of Health and Human Services, there are 3,063,162 registered nurses (RNs) in the United States. Of these, 16.8 percent are from minority groups. While the proportion of minority RNs continues to rise, it does not yet reflect the racial distribution of the entire US population, of which 35 percent are from minority groups. This entry reviews disparities in the prevalence of nurses from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Nurses from many races, cultures, and ethnicities participate in and influence the field of nursing. It is important to continue to cultivate this diversity as it promotes unique perspectives that are needed in caring for increasingly heterogeneous patient populations.
Health Social Movements
Authors: Cordner Alissa , Brown Phil , Morello‐Frosch Rachel 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
Health social movements have strongly affected the health care system, health care policies and regulations, and public awareness of health and illness. These movements are as old as the industrial revolution, when activists and allied professionals focused on urban poverty and occupational health. Starting in the late 1960s, the women's health movement became one of the most profound of all social movements. It challenged medical stereotypes of women, broadened reproductive rights, demanded expanded funding and services, pressed for changes in traditional standards of clinical care, and changed medical research practices. AIDS activists learned from that movement and fought for expanded funding for research and treatment, advocated for the application of complementary and alternative treatment approaches, and won major shifts in the design of clinical trials.
Migration
Authors: Greenwood Heather Louise , Bourgeault Ivy Lynn 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
Migration is defined as the movement of people across international borders or the internal borders of a state resulting in a change of residence. At any one point, approximately 3.1 percent of the world's population is residing in a country in which they were not born. Changes and challenges posed by migration may include language and cultural barriers, changes in food, lifestyle, and health habits, social exclusion, and restricted access to employment opportunities and health services. The coping strategies adopted by migrants to adapt to their new environments, such as creating links to social networks, are also of relevance. We consider six key issues: the healthy immigrant effect; health service utilization among immigrants; gender, migration, and health; the vulnerability of temporary migrants; migration, food, and health; and diaspora and health.
Control, Sense of
Authors: Hinote Brian P. 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
Purely biomedical explanations of disease originating in medicine, public health, and epidemiology often focus on proximate pathogenic factors, or on the very diseases themselves, to unravel increasingly complex disease processes. However, many medical sociologists, social epidemiologists, and other forward‐looking professionals in medicine, nursing, and public health emphasize the significance of distal factors and their roles in the origins of disease. Among investigations of health, sense of control has emerged as a particularly important variable of interest in recent decades. In studies of social factors and their ubiquitous health effects, sense of control as an explanatory concept yields valuable insights into the impacts of social factors and how these forces actually impinge on individuals’ lives. Thus this idea is an important one that helps researchers and practitioners span multiple levels of social and epidemiological analysis. Early investigations related to control yielded models related to effort–reward imbalance and job strain, which have been further evaluated and subsequently refined. However the concept is measured, it is typical that as one moves down in a particular social hierarchy, one has less control over life, work, and environment, and this control (or lack of it) exhibits measurable effects on mental and physical health.
Infectious Disease
Authors: Brown Peter J. 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
There are three primary anthropological approaches to the study of infectious disease: ecological, historical, and applied. All focus on the interaction of humans and pathogens in particular ecological contexts. Cultural behaviors can increase or decrease the prevalence of disease, but social class is one of the strongest predictors of disease burden. Four analytical levels must be used in understanding culture and disease ecology: microbiological, individual behavioral, sociocultural, and political economic. Historical approaches utilize bioarcheological data and documents to show that human history has been characterized as three epidemiological transitions. These include the rise of infectious disease at the dawn of agriculture and early cities, the decline of infectious disease and improved health during the nineteenth century, and the re‐emergence of infectious disease in the past two decades. Applied medical anthropologists collaborate with public health practitioners to improve the effectiveness of disease control and prevention programs by increasing cultural acceptance and community participation.
Interactionism
Authors: Belgrave Linda Liska 
Published: February 2014

AbstractSymbolic interactionism is a theoretical perspective that can be used to understand and analyze connections between health, illness, behavior, and society. A product of the pragmatist philosophical orientation, symbolic interactionism emphasizes the importance of social interaction, the meanings of phenomena as developed and interpreted by social actors, and human agency. Based largely on the work of Mead and Blumer, interactionists see persons’ selves as emergent social processes, both influenced by, and influencing, the social worlds in which they are enmeshed. This entry outlines this theoretical perspective, emphasizing the Chicago School, including related traditions, and highlighting some of its contributions to medical sociology and related fields.
Bioethics
Authors: Wasserman Jason Adam , Stevenson Shannon Lindsey 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
Bioethics generally refers to a discipline with a central focus on the moral considerations surrounding issues of life, particularly health and medicine. While discourse on ethics has always supplemented medical philosophy and practice, advances in technology in the mid‐twentieth century enabled life‐saving and life‐sustaining measures well beyond the capacity of medicine in earlier eras. In turn, there arose new questions about the uses of these technologies and the relationship between medical decision‐making and other human values. Across the last few decades, new advances in medical imaging, genetics, and surgery, particularly success with organ transplantation, have promoted the expansion of bioethics as a field, where it has witnessed growing numbers of professionals, increasing organization (e.g., the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities), and expanding discursive terrain, where bioethicists now engage in discussions of doctor–patient communication, environmental issues, and cultural competency in medicine. This entry provides an overview of bioethics from its historical precursors to its emergence its own field, concluding with contemporary debates and future challenges.
Pharmacology
Authors: Saris A. Jamie 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
This is a short description of pharmacology and some of the recent research trends relating to it. I begin with a brief definition of pharmacology, followed by a recent history of the modern pharmaceutical industry, with a special focus on the proliferation of drugs and syndromes in the recent past. Some of the social science interest that these developments have sparked is then reviewed, especially the globalization of both the pharmaceutical industry and the desire for pharmaceuticals. Both the anxiety and the promise of the pharmaceutical moment are investigated, with attention paid to the life cycle of drugs, the relationships between legal and illegal ingestion, and the increasing reality of poly‐pharmacy. The contribution concludes with an outline of the complexity of modern pharmacology both as an object of research and as an increasingly important economic and sociocultural force in the modern world.
Socialized Medicine
Authors: Nettleton Sarah , Dingwall Robert 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
Socialized medicine is a system of health care delivery in which care is provided as a state‐supported service. The UK National Health Service is often taken to be a paradigm case. However, it is doubtful whether it ever represented “socialism in action” in the way that North American observers described it. Since 1979 it has become increasingly marketized in England, although internal political devolution has left considerable scope for the administrations in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to pursue policies that are much closer to the founding vision. In this sense, socialized medicine may be said to survive in some parts of the United Kingdom.
Disease and Representation
Authors: Brown Tim 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
Similarly to scholars in other disciplines allied with the arts, humanities, and social sciences, geographers have explored the ways in which particular kinds of bodies have been represented as diseased and/or healthy in both the past and the present. Foucault's work on the body as a site of particular regimes of knowledge and power relations has been pivotal in shifting focus towards the kinds of technologies utilized in producing such understandings. Following his analyses, geographers acknowledge, though not entirely without criticism, that one of the key ways of studying social parameters of normativity and the mechanisms for enforcing them is to look at representations of sick bodies. Here “sick” does not mean simply images or understandings of bodies that are diseased; rather, it refers to a much more expanded investigation of bodies depicted as undesirable, impure, or deviant at various moments in time and place.
Sick Role
Authors: Cockerham William C. 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
Talcott Parsons's concept of the sick role is a pivotal event in medical sociology, helping to transform the field in the 1950s from an applied focus toward an embrace of theory that helped solidify its academic orientation. Up until this time, medical sociology was largely atheoretical and loosely organized as a sociological subdiscipline. It had focused on topics that could be applied to policy and practical health care problem solving until Parsons also added a theoretical component. Although subjected to criticism, the sick role remains an important theory as an “ideal type” or model of the behavior of sick persons and their social role.
Conversation Analysis
Authors: Pilnick Alison 
Published: February 2014

Abstract
Conversation analysis (CA) is a sociological approach to the study of human interaction. It was developed in the 1960s by Harvey Sacks and his colleagues Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. Since its beginnings in the study of ordinary or mundane talk, it has broadened its focus to institutional interaction, and particularly to interaction in health care settings. This work examines not only doctor–patient interaction, but also interactions between patients and a wide range of health care professionals, and interactions between professionals themselves. Through careful and detailed analysis of audio or video recorded naturally occurring interactions, it has shed light on topics such as how professionals elicit patient concerns and how patients present them; how diagnosis delivery and agreement on future treatment are reached; how matters of expertise are negotiated; and how the introduction of new technologies impacts on day‐to‐day health care practice.
Medical Education, Globalization of
Authors: Stevens Fred C. J. 
Published: February 2014

AbstractMany countries around the world have three ambitions in higher education: attracting more students; improving standards to compete in international markets; and promoting equitable access without sociocultural and ethnic discrimination. Globalization is seen as the answer to these ambitions. Medical education fits into the concept of globalization, as in a globalizing world medical students are a strategic group to meet expectations and visions in health and health care. There is an increasing call on medical educators to prepare medical students for the social, economic, and health care realities of tomorrow. Globalization of medical education however is more than the import or export of instructional designs, but includes Western models of social organization that require deep reflection and adaptation for success.
Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System
Authors: Hiday Virginia Aldige , Moloney Mairead Eastin 
Published: February 2014

AbstractPersons with severe mental illness (PSMI) are overrepresented in the criminal justice system (CJS). While some believe that PSMI are dealt with unfairly, others hold that PSMI are inherently violent, and “coddled” by the system. Hypotheses of criminalization (unfair arrest) and criminality (inherent violence) are not empirically supported; the public's concern about preferential treatment also appears unwarranted. Diversion programs, including mental health courts, may increase treatment and service options for PSMI interacting with the CJS. Most PSMI are not criminals and it is important to consider the social contexts of the subgroups who are most likely to criminally offend.
Stress: Conceptualization in Medicine and Social Sciences
Authors: Wethington Elaine , Hachey Sara M. , Rosenblum Sarah F. 
Published: February 2014

AbstractOne of the challenges of research on stress has been its varied conceptualization across fields of study, from biology and medicine to fields in the behavioral and social sciences. This entry contrasts different approaches to conceptualizing stress in the social sciences and medicine, and highlights recent attempts to integrate these approaches into biopsychosocial models that can be translated across disciplines and into health disparities research and behavioral change interventions. Future progress to integrate the sociological environmental perspective into medical research will be facilitated by longitudinal studies of the population that utilize concepts from the social sciences, along with physiological biomarkers.
Stress and Terrorism
Authors: Sayed Bisma Ali , Johnson Robert J. 
Published: February 2014

AbstractTerrorism has long occupied a place in human history, yet we have only recently begun to systematically investigate its effects on our mental and physical health. Extant research finds evidence that direct and indirect exposure to terrorism is associated with psychological distress, including post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression. Surprisingly, research also suggests that exposure to terrorism can trigger processes of adaptation that stimulate resilience in individuals and communities. This entry reviews the various types and forms of terrorism (transnational and domestic, state‐sponsored and non‐state‐sponsored), and the links between terrorism and adverse health outcomes. Special attention is paid to the emerging research on the positive consequences arising from exposure to terrorism. The various response trajectories of individuals who have been exposed to terrorism are outlined. The entry focuses, in particular, on interdisciplinary explanations for the heterogeneous nature of individuals’ responses to terrorism, and concludes by examining whether the current research agenda can be further expanded to better understand the multilevel factors that contribute to adverse health consequences after exposure to terrorism.
Social Gradient
Authors: Donkin Angela J. M. 
Published: February 2014

AbstractThe social gradient in health is a term used to describe the phenomenon whereby people who are less advantaged in terms of socioeconomic position have worse health (and shorter lives) than those who are more advantaged. A classic example of research on this subject is the Whitehall study of British civil servants. Analysis of these data show a steep inverse association between social class and health and mortality from a wide range of diseases. Self‐perceived health status and symptoms were also worse in subjects in lower status jobs. There were clear employment grade differences in health‐risk behaviors, in possible effects of early life environment, in social circumstances at work, and in social supports. It is clear that people in the highest social strata live longer and have better health than those in the strata just below them who, in turn, live longer than those just below them and so on in a downward gradient until the bottom of the social ladder is reached.