This chapter has discussed the intersecting systems and institutions that are designed to provide health, safety, and security in the United States. The way we build our systems for these human needs are influenced by the way we socially construct our understanding of them. That includes the meaning we make of illness and the medical experience, the worldviews we inhabit about health, safety, and security, the ones we historically shunned, and the ones that are returning. The way our institutions are built for caring for our health, and keeping us safe are influenced by our social location and our human interactions. Often those interactions yield unequal access, discrimination, and deep harm, as they are built on a legacy of colonization. It is the negative effects of these interactions, and prompts from climate change, that have nudged social changes so we may reframe our needs around health and safety. From that reframing we are able to construct new ways, or recall traditional ways, of providing care and safety for everyone.

Review of Learning Outcomes

This chapter has offered you the opportunity to:

• Explain how sociology applies policy evaluation and a social construction lens to study healthcare in the United States.
• Illustrate how groups experience health, safety, and security in the United States differently, and how government plays a role.
• Explain how colonization shapes contemporary issues around health, safety, and security.
• Discuss alternative and decolonizing models for providing health, safety, and security in society.

Key Terms

community accountability: a community-based strategy, rather than a police/prison-based strategy, to address violence within communities.

enculturation: the gradual process of an individual or group adapting to the norms and values of a culture in which they are immersed.

global majority: Black, Indigenous, and other people of color and typically (though not all) with origins in Africa, Central and South America, and Asia who constitute approximately 85 percent of the global population.

government: the institution by which a society organizes itself and allocates authority to accomplish collective goals and provide benefits that a society needs.

health: the extent of a person’s physical, environmental, emotional, mental, and social well-being.

healthcare: the system of norms, rules, and organizations established to provide medical services.

medical sociology: the systematic study of how humans manage issues of health and illness, disease and disorders, and health care for both the sick and the healthy.

racial bias: preconceived beliefs, attitudes, and expectations about racial group members.

socialized medicine: a healthcare system that is owned and run by the government.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK): the wisdom and intelligence, innovations, and practices of Indigenous and local communities that have been handed down through generations; TEK focuses on the relationship of living beings with one another and with their environment.

transformative justice: a political framework and approach for responding to violence, harm, and abuse. It seeks to respond to violence through harm reduction, or without creating more violence.

universal healthcare: a system that guarantees healthcare coverage for everyone.

Comprehension Check

Licenses and Attributions for Conclusion

Open Content, Original

“Conclusion” by Aimee Samara Krouskop is licensed under CC CC BY-SA 4.0

“Comprehension Check” was created by Veronica Vold and Michelle Culley for Open Oregon Educational Resources and is licensed CC BY 4.0.