Download The Social Model of Health

G672
How can we measure how healthy our
society is?
Two indicators are used: Morbidity and
Mortality.
It is impossible to measure morbidity with
any validity or reliability because definitions
of health and illness are so subjective.
Therefore, mortality rates are the most
commonly used to measure health/illness.

What do you think has happened in the UK to
explain this continuous decline in mortality?

In pairs, identify and explain a minimum of
five explanations.
Ext: - Which explanations would be favoured by the biomedical model?
The Social Model of Health is an umbrella
term for a range of ideas and strategies about
health and healthcare.
It emerged as a result of criticisms against the
biomedical model.
RECAP:
What were the key criticisms of the
biomedical model? Write down at least
two!

The biomedical model looks for the causes of
illness within the individual.

The social model looks for the causes of
illness within society.

The work of McKeown (and other
medical historians) is one of the
biggest criticisms of biomedicine – and
demonstrates the importance of the social
model.

The McKeown Thesis states that medical
intervention has been largely ineffective in
curing illness and disease.

What is tuberculosis?
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Tuberculosis/Pa
ges/Introduction.aspx

McKeown used tuberculosis as a case study (though the same has been
applied to other diseases)

If medical treatment was so irrelevant,
what were the social causes of
improvement?
1.
Nutrition

Improvement in people’s diet – due to
advances in agriculture (e.g. new crops,
increased availability) – from end of C17th
onwards.
Better nutritional levels increase resistance
to infectious disease (and reduce death by
starvation).

2. Public Hygiene



E.g. Cleaner, piped water and better sewage
disposal.
This reduces exposure to disease (esp. waterborne diseases like cholera).
Improved food hygiene from 1900 also
helped (e.g. Introduction of sterilisation and
bottling).
3. Birth Limitation



Fall in birth-rate and family size in the
middle-classes from 1870s.
Limits on population crucial for health of a
society.
Drop in birth-rate also nearly eliminates
infanticide by reducing unwanted pregnancy.

Not all diseases respond to an improvement
in the social environment.

Medicine was the decisive factor in
curing/treating diseases like diphtheria and
polio.
List five other social or environmental
factors that might influence health.

Health and illness are not biological facts.
They are relative.





The society you live in
Your gender
Your Social Class
Your ethnicity
Your age
In pairs: Identify at least two ways in which
EACH ONE of the above could influence
how healthy/ill you feel (5 mins)

The society you live in (e.g. obesity)

Your gender (e.g. men less likely to define themselves
as “ill”)

Your social class (e.g. working class accept higher
levels of illness)

Your ethnicity (Punjabis in Bradford suffer from a
‘sinking heart’)

Your age (e.g. joint pains being accepted as normal)
Nettleton (2006)
 Health and disease are socially patterned.
 Illness is not randomly distributed: There are
clear patterns in terms of class, gender and
ethnicity.
 This suggests it is social and
environmental factors that make
some groups more vulnerable to
disease than others.
Promotes the view that the definitions and
judgements of lay people are just as valid as
professional assessments.
 Much illness is diagnosed and treated within the
family.
 Illness is a personal experience, not a medical one.


McKeown developed his work into a critique
of modern healthcare.

He argues that we spend too much money on
treating disease and not enough on
prevention and health education.

Most of the time, illness exists. It’s not
relative or subjective: If you’re ill, you’re ill.

The social model doesn’t ‘replace’ the
biomedical model: It puts it into perspective.

Create a presentation promoting your own
healthcare company that only uses the social
model to treat illness/disease.

How would such an approach work?
20 mins then present.
Identify and explain two reasons why
sociologists might prefer a social model of
health [17]