HSCI

Structural functionalist paradigm

• eg. Sick role (how a sick person should behave)

• How do the different parts keep society running smoothly or disrupt it (hospitals, clinics, etc.)

• explains how each part of society contributes to its stability

Illness as a subjective experience

• moral character judging (what are you doing to stop illness)

• Perception of ill health

Physical reductionism

• Breaking things into smaller parts to understand them

• health care increasingly reductionist as biomedical knowledge is developed

Specific Etiology

• Each disease has a specific cause

• Belief that discovering cause will lead to treatment

Machine Metaphor

• the human body is seen as a machine

Individualized regimen and control

• Individuals are responsible for their own health

• disease can be fought through regimen and control

• victim blaming critique

4 D’s

• dermatitis

• Diarrhea

• Dementia

• death

What causes lime disease

• borrelia burgdorferi

when was lime disease discovered in the US

• connecticut 1970s

Lime disease symptoms

• neurological symptoms

• body aches

• rash

• arthritis

• headache

• poor appetite

EM rash

• 70-80% of infected lime disease ppl get this

• begins at site of tick bite between 3-30 days

• maybe warm but not itchy or painful

How LD is transmitted

• tick gets bacteria from tick hosts (deers n stuff)

Main vector for LD

• Deer tick/black legged tick

Why the deer tick is spreading in canada

• warmer temps

• dispersion on animal hosts

Population Strategies

• Preventing large population from small chance at disease

• Then you can focus on the high risk section

• Prevention strategy

High Risk Strategy

• Find people at highest risk to disease and offer individual level prevention

Disadvantages of High Risk Strategy

• difficult screening

• Behaviourally inappropriate (social outcast)

• limited potential

• band-aid fix (fixing one person instead of population)

Paradigm

• framework/school of thought about a specific aspect of reality

Inductive Research

• creating a new theory

• bottom up approach

deductive research

• adding onto an existing theory

• top down approach

• testing if a theory is true

sociology in medicine

• application of sociological perspectives to solve medical problems

• eg supporting people to lose weight

Sociology of medicine

• theoretical

• about understanding social factors that effect health

  • eg organizational structure

Health Sociology

• Studying how social structures/practices influence overall health in society

• focuses on good health and bad health

Conflict Theory

• Society is a constant battle for power

• The powerful ones make the rules in order to stay on top

• goal is to identify inequality

Feminist Paradigm

• Society is set up to benefit masculinity (men) instead of femininity (women)

• goal is gender equality

Symbol Interactionist

• Seeing things through micro lens (eg. 2 people in a room interpreting what’s happening)

• Reality is something we create through symbols and meanings

• goal is to understand individual meaning

Sociology of the body

• Looks at how society shapes our physical selves through diet, exercise

• bodies are shaped by what is seen as normal or healthy

• connects physical body to social rules

Life Course

• Our entire history shapes our health

• goal is to track patterns over time

• what happened in the past effects who you are now

Biomedical Model

• Assumes that diseases are only caused by biological factors

• Treats mind and body as separate things

• Fix-it approach

• Doctor is seen as the expert (mechanic)

4 features of western science

• objectivity

  • neutralness

• reductionism

  • fixing the small things fixes the big picture

• empiricism

  • if we can’t see or measure it, it doesn’t exist

• universalism

  • looks for one-size-fits-all rules that apply to everybody