Sociology of health

Health sociology is a branch of sociology and interfaces with medical sociology . It deals with the relationship between social situation and health, with the determinants of health behavior and with the structures of the health system.

Focus

One focus of health sociology is the empirical investigation and theoretical explanation of the unequal distribution of health opportunities in different social milieus . The focus is on the connection between health and social inequality.

History of the subject

The sociology of health as an independent special sociology arose in the 1980s from the sociology of medicine and parallel to the expansion of the health sciences in Germany. This development is related to the stronger emphasis on health and health promotion as a goal of all policy areas in the Ottawa Charter of the WHO and the scientific return to public health in Germany as well as the reconnection to the traditions of social medicine from before the Second World War. This development was funded by the funding of research associations by the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology.

The connection between social situation and health has already occupied researchers at the time of the industrial revolution . The different living conditions of the social classes also preoccupied physicians such as Rudolf Virchow . In 1847, for example, Virchow carried out an investigation into the typhus epidemic that had broken out in Upper Silesia and found that “ the spiritual and material impoverishment into which [the people] had been allowed to sink ” was responsible for a higher susceptibility to disease. A study by Friedrich Engels on the situation of the working class in England is considered one of the early medical-sociological studies.

Social hygiene and social medicine experienced their heyday up to the First World War , even if one could not agree on a uniform term for the new research direction ( social etiology , social medicine , social hygiene and social pathology were discussed). In his work Social Pathology, the German physician Alfred Grotjahn included not only infectious diseases but also other diseases and risk factors . Gustav Tugendreich and Max Mosse bundled a total of twenty studies by various doctors and sociologists on social causes and the social treatment of illnesses in their anthology “ Illness and Social Situation ” and made suggestions to politicians to reduce class-specific differences.

In the post-war period, a medical sociology based on the sociologist Talcott Parsons developed , whose elaboration of his systems theory using the example of the doctor-patient relationship in his book The Social System is considered the birth of this special sociology. René König and Margret Tönnesmann published, among other contributions from the conference on the problems of medical sociology, the German translation of this chapter in a special volume in the Cologne journal for sociology and social psychiatry in 1958, and as a result the institutionalization of medical sociology began. In 1960, a section of the American Sociological Association's medical sociology was founded in the USA ; in Germany, medical sociology was initially part of the medical course within the psychosocial medicine subject group in 1970. The German Society for Sociology has had a Medical Sociology Section since 1970, which was renamed the Medical and Health Sociology Section in 2000/2001. The German Society for Medical Sociology has also existed since 1972, following the same research agenda as the sociology of health.

literature

• Monika Jungbauer-Gans , Peter Kriwy: Handbook of Health Sociology . Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-06391-7 .
• Thomas Hehlmann, Henning Schmidt-Semisch, Friedrich Schorb: Sociology of Health (utb). UVK-Lucius Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-8252-4741-6 .
• Klaus Hurrelmann , Matthias Richter: Health and Medical Sociology. An introduction to social science health research. Beltz Juventa, 2013, ISBN 978-3-7799-2605-4 .
• Klaus Hurrelmann : Sociology of Health. An introduction to social science theories of disease prevention and health promotion. Juventa-Verlag, 2000, ISBN 978-3-7799-1468-6 .
• Bernhard Mann : Sociology of Health. In: Staatslexikon. Law-economy-society. Second volume. Herder Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3-451-37512-5

Individual evidence

1. ^ Andreas Mielck: Social inequality and health. Empirical results, explanations, options for intervention. Publisher Hans Huber. Bern, Göttingen, Toronto, Seattle 2000
2. ↑ Andreas Mielck: Social Inequality and Health: Introduction to the Current Discussion. Publisher Hans Huber Bern, Göttingen, Toronto, Seattle 2005
3. ^ Gunnar Sollberg: Medical sociology . transcript. Bielefeld 2001, p. 62f.
4. ^ WHO: Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. 1986. Translated: Ottawa Charter
5. ↑ Brigitte Ruckstuhl: Health Promotion: Development History of a New Public Health Perspective . Juventa. Weinheim 2011.
6. ↑ Jürgen von Troschke, Jürgen; Axel Hoffmann-Markwald; Georg Reschauer and Ursula Häberlein (eds.): Development of health sciences / public health in Germany . Status report. Freiburg 1993.
7. ^ Friedrich Engels: The situation of the working class in England . In: Karl Mara and Friedrich Engels: Works , Volume 2, Dietz. Berlin / GDR 1962/1845, pp. 225–506
8. ^ Talcott Parsons: The Social System . Free press. New York; London 1951
9. ^ Gunnar Stollberg: Medical sociology . transcript. Bielefeld 2001, p. 9
10. ^ Parsons, Talcott: Structure and function of modern medicine . In: König, Renè; Margret Tönnesmann (ed.): Problems of medicine-sociology . Special issue 3 of the Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology 1958, pp. 10–57.
11. ^ Gunnar Stollberg: Medical sociology . transcript. Bielefeld 2001, p. 9
12. ^ Maximiliane Wilkesman: Knowledge transfer in the hospital. VS publishing house for social sciences. Wiesbaden 2001, p. 50
13. ^ German Society for Medical Sociology