There are three situations in health care where it is important to have the idea of social construction in mind to properly understand what is going on. The first are conditions that in past times were mostly thought of as moral or behavioral disorders but that in the last half century have been called diseases and treated in medical contexts even though many people in the public do not accept that people affected always actually have a disease.
Examples are alcohlism, learning disabilities, and depression.
Examples are cystic fibrosis and Lyme disease. The third are conditions of potential medical significance that neither the public nor the medical community are either willing to call diseases or to ignore. An example are genetic propensities to cancer that can be identified through screening tests. Brown offers a typology of disease that in a chart provides an easy way to visualize these situations where social construction of disease is an issue. His typology represents the interaction of two variables.