Re: How would you approach this essay?
Sorry, reading it back I was a bit vague. This is what we got told about it.
3. Discuss the statement ‘health should be considered as more than just an absence of disease’
If you have chosen to write on this subject you should start by pointing out that historically health has been treated as only the absence of disease and nothing more. The interactive package on health inequalities in blackboard demonstrates throughout that health is more than ‘the absence of disease’ in particular social factors affect health status. To see health as the absence of disease is to see health in negative terms (work towards avoiding disease rather than keeping healthy). In contrast to work towards keeping healthy is to see health in positive terms. The World Health Organisation emphasises the need for positive health and dealing with those factors that determine health.
When writing this essay you could demonstrate how and why the social factors like employment determine health (the determinants of health, see the interactive package on blackboard). If you write in this way about the determinants of health you will be writing about social class. You could also write about the way social factors associated with gender or ethnicity influence health status. For example women are more likely than men to be poor and poverty has an effect on health. However, it is equally appropriate to write only about the determinants of health and their influence on health through social class. For example, people in social class V are more likely to live in poor housing and be unemployed or have a low paid routine job.
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