Society and health A Sociological Perspective

Health is as much the responsibility of an individual as that of the society. However, health as a concept is quite slippery. Despite efforts made to define it precisely, it remains illusive. Health is a situated concept and one may be healthy here and now and not there and then. But in holistic terms, it takes into account the curative, preventive, promotive and rehabilitive aspects. This warrants analysing some of the socio-cultural, psychological and political syndromes of health and disease apart from their medical dimensions.

An individual as a component of society influences it as well as gets influenced by the societal norms, values and interactional patterns. The varying situations and the human complexities give rise to various patterns of health care seeking behaviours, professionalization of health personnel, socio-cultural and psychological aspects of health care, institutionalization of health care, a need to strengthen the sociological aspects of health teaching, conscientization of public through health education methods and media and to policy interventions through appropriate leadership structure.

Society and Health, which is a collection of articles and papers written by the author, from time to time, addresses to some of the above questions and makes an attempt to suggest certain social engineering measures for making health both the responsibility of an individual and the society.