10.6 Chapter Summary
Kathryn Burrows and Kimberly Puttman
In this section, we explored the different explanations for health, wellness, and illness. We saw that health is a social problem because not everyone has equitable access to health services. We noticed that racism itself, expressed as weathering, causes unequal health outcomes. We applied this concept to people with other oppressed social locations as an explanation for health inequality. We looked at changes in reproductive rights, maternal health outcomes, and the need for reproductive justice. We examined how different implementations of health insurance worldwide change health outcomes. Finally, we explored how COVID-19 challenged us to take individual and collective action to ensure the health of all of us. Health for all is social justice.
10.6.1 Essential Ideas
Learning Objective 1: How is health a social problem?
We can look at health as a social problem in two ways. First, the experience of health or illness goes beyond the individual. People get sick or get well partially based on their experience of social location. A person’s race, class, or gender identity, for example, can partially predict their health outcomes. Second, we can apply the social problems process to health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand social conflict and social change in health as a social problem.
Learning Objective 2: How do sociologists and health researchers model influences on health outcomes to measure health inequality?
Sociologists use the Social Determinants of Health model to explore the social factors that influence the health outcomes of people in different populations. They use the ACES model to predict the impact of generational, historical, and childhood trauma on individual health outcomes. Both models help explain why oppressed people have poorer health outcomes than powerful people.
Learning Objective 3: How do sociologists make sense of health and illness? How have our definitions changed over time?
Sociologists argue that the meaning of sickness and health is socially constructed. We can examine the roles of patients and providers to understand how we deliver healthcare. We can also look at health and healthcare as an arena of power, control, and inequality. Finally, sociologists look at health as an experience of deviance or labeling.
Learning Objective 4: How has COVID-19 provided an opportunity to assess and create interdependent solutions that improve health outcomes to ensure social justice for oppressed people?
The COVID-19 pandemic clearly demonstrates the inequality in healthcare outcomes that different social groups experience. We see racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other relationships of power causing people to get sicker and die more often if they are from an oppressed group. Part of the responsibility to change this rests at the level of the federal government. Access to affordable insurance or affordable healthcare could change health outcomes, particularly for our most vulnerable people. But interdependent solutions don’t stop at the federal government level. States, counties, and communities can work together in creative ways to create healthy lives for every person. Health equity is social justice.
10.6.2 Key Terms List
- Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood (0-17 years)
- contested illness: an illness that is questioned or considered questionable by some medical professionals
- COVID-19: an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
- epidemiology: the study of disease and health, and their causes and distribution
- health: a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
- historical trauma: multigenerational trauma experienced by a specific cultural, racial or ethnic group. It is related to major events that oppressed a particular group of people because of their status as oppressed, such as slavery, the Holocaust, forced migration, and the violent colonization of Native Americans.
- medicalization: the process by which aspects of life that were considered bad or deviant are redefined as sickness and needing medical attention to remedy
- medical sociology: the systematic study of how humans manage issues of health and illness, disease and disorders, and healthcare for both the sick and the healthy.
- morbidity: the incidence of disease
- mortality: the number of deaths in a given time or place
- Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010): a law that provides numerous rights and protections that make health coverage more fair and easier to understand, along with subsidies (through “premium tax credits” and “cost-sharing reductions”) to make it more affordable.
- private healthcare: health insurance that a person buys from a private company; private healthcare can either be employer-sponsored or direct-purchase
- public healthcare: health insurance that is funded or provided by the government
- reproductive justice: a framework that centers the human right to have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and healthy environments
- sick role: patterns of expectations that define appropriate behavior for the sick and for those who take care of them.
- social determinants of health: social features of a person or group, such as race, class, gender, ability, rural/urban status, etc. that partially determine the health and wellness of the person or group.
- socialized medicine: when the government owns and runs the entire healthcare system
- trauma: a person’s (or group) response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms one’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes self-esteem and the ability to feel a full range of emotions and experiences.
- underinsured: people who pay at least 10 percent of their income on healthcare costs not covered by insurance
- universal healthcare: a system that guarantees healthcare coverage for everyone
- weathering: the concept that racism and other social pressures can lead to poorer health outcomes
10.6.3 Discuss and Do
- Health as a social problem: How could you apply the social problems process to a health-related topic: smoking, alcohol use, eating disorders, etc.?
- Intersectionality of Health: What did you and your families experience during COVID-19? How does this experience reveal intersectional social problems or interdependent solutions?
- Gender, Sexuality and Health: Some people believe that gender-affirming care is essential. Others think it should be restricted. Using the concepts of this chapter to support your answer, what do you think.?
- Reproductive Health and Reproductive Justice: Reproductive health and reproductive justice are contentious political topics. Please find examples of protest art, one from each side, and explain how the art reflects the conflict in values and power. If you like, you can create your own art for this assignment.
10.6.4 Licenses and Attributions for Chapter Summary
Open Content, Original
“Chapter Summary” by Kathryn Burrows and Kimberly Puttman is licensed under CC BY 4.0.