Sociology 3 exam-week 12

A biological condition of the body (e.g., an infection, tumor, or physical trauma) that is diagnosed and treated by medical professionals.

Disease

The social and personal experience of being sick, including how a person feels, acts, and is treated by others when they have a disease.

Illness

The rate of illness or disease in a specific population over a given period.

Morbidity

The rate of death in a specific population over a given period.

Mortality

The process by which social problems (like excessive drinking, hyperactivity, or aging) become defined and treated as medical conditions or illnesses.

Medicalization

A concept by Talcott Parsons, defining the social expectations that come with being sick: the right to be exempt from normal responsibilities, but the obligation to seek treatment and try to get better.

Sick Role

The non-medical factors (e.g., income, education, housing, social support, race/ethnicity) that profoundly influence individual and population health outcomes.

Social determinants of health

The study of how environmental factors, including social stress and poverty, can physically alter gene expression (turning genes on or off) without changing the underlying DNA sequence.

Epigenetics

Focuses on individual pathology and treating the disease/sickness inside the patient's body (a curative approach).

Medical model*

Focuses on social structure and environment as the primary causes of health and illness, advocating for preventative, structural changes.

Social model*

Systematic, avoidable, and unfair differences in health status seen between population groups (e.g., differences in life expectancy between rich and poor neighborhoods).

Health disparities*

The observation that health status generally improves with rising socioeconomic status, running from the bottom to the top of the social ladder—not just between poor and rich.

Social gradients of health*

In this context, chronic exposure to structural adversity (like poverty, discrimination, or daily microaggressions) that leads to long-term biological 'wear and tear' on the body's systems.

Stress*

Arline Geronimus's theory that the cumulative toll of this chronic stress causes accelerated aging and earlier onset of chronic disease in socioeconomically disadvantaged populations (especially Black women) due to structural racism.

Weathering hypothesis*

The finding that a strong sense of social cohesion and community support can act as a powerful protective factor against health problems (like heart disease), overriding traditional individual risk factors (like diet or smoking).

Roseto effect*