Heath and wellness

Disease

Physical or mental disorder in the structure or function of the body.

Impairment

Loss or diminishment of physical or mental function.

Disability

A limitation created when an impairment isn’t accommodated in the physical and social environment.

Demography

Study of features of human populations such as births, deaths, aging, etc.

Racial segregation

Degree to which different racial and ethnic groups live apart.

Economic segregation

Degree to which the poor live apart from wealthier groups.

Medical sociology

Branch of sociology that deals with social and cultural features of health, illness, and medicine.

Social control

Ways societies try to influence members’ behaviour to maintain social order.

Labelling

Assigning a disease or medical condition to an illness or set of symptoms.

Contested illness

Illness that is disputed or questioned by medical experts.

Psychosomatic illness

Illness that is considered the physical manifestation of a mental illness or stress.

Medicalization

Process by which ordinary experiences are defined in medical terms.

Sick role

Rights and responsibilities of a person who has a socially legitimate illness.

Socially legitimate

Consistent with the norms and values in a society.

Stigma

Characteristic of an individual or group that is seen as inferior or undesirable.

Sexually transmitted infection

An infection which can be passed between individuals during sexual contact.

Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act

Federal law requiring hospital emergency departments to stabilize or transfer people with medical emergencies.

Health care system

Collection of institutions and organizations that deliver and fund health care.

Medicare

Federal program that provides health insurance to adults 65 years and older and certain younger people.

Affordable Care Act

Federal health care law that expanded health insurance coverage.

Universal coverage

All people have affordable access to the medical services they need.

Ideologies

Systems of ideals.

Structural racism

Set of beliefs and ideologies supporting the superiority of a specific racial group.

Structural sexism

Set of beliefs and ideologies supporting the superiority of men over women.

Occupational prestige

Status and social power associated with particular occupations.

Social network

Structure of socially interrelated individuals.

Social support

Emotional, informational, and instrumental support received from others.

Social environment

Social elements of one’s work, school, or neighborhood.

Physical environment

Human-made and natural features of a work, school, or neighborhood context.

Stereotype

A widely shared perception about the characteristics of a particular group.

Spillover Effects

Effects of one context or situation on a seemingly unrelated context or situation.

Interpersonal discrimination

Unfair treatment by one person to another due to prejudice.

Stress proliferation

One stressful experience cascades into other stressful experiences.

Vigilance

Anticipation and worry-related stress due to stigmatizing stereotypes.

Life course perspective

The view that social experiences and health are interrelated throughout our lives.

Pandemic

An outbreak of an infectious disease over a wide geographical area for a significant time.

Epidemic

Outbreaks of infectious disease in a single country or a relatively contained part of the world.

Epidemiology

The study of how diseases spread and affect populations.

Social genomics

Field that integrates social factors with genetics to understand health.

Socioecological model

The health of a person is embedded within many interconnected contextual layers.

Improving schools

Student-centered learning environment with positive ties between families and educators.