exam 2012 Flashcards
What are social factors?
all phenomena involved in the interactions between two or more people
e.g. discrimination, cohesion
How does the ethical principle of “justice” judge the fairness of a health inequality, with an example?
Justice: whether society systemically disadvantages one group over another.
e.g. distribution of health services in communities
What is the “health as not ill” view of health described by Blaxter(2001)?
health is defined as the absence of disease
What are the three rationing options when addressing economic scarcity?
- Market solution - allowing people to spend resources and distribute freely (leaving it up to the market) (people have choice of how much they want to spend on health)
- Equitable distribution (those who really need it )
- Equal distribution (giving equally, and increasing inequalities
What are some of the differences between the NZDep Index and the Registrar General Scale for measuring SES?
NZDep- Area based.
-focuses on deprivation- what people do NOT have
RGS- based on occupation. individual based
What are some cultural/behaviuoral explanations to explain the high rates of obesity in males compared to females?
females have a pressure to be thin
normal behaviour for woman to eat less than men
What are two examples of material/structural differences that could explain health inequalities between different generations?
technology more developed for better health care in later society
-information about smoking is more accessible
What are the medical and social model definitions?
Medical. Patient is the problem/ Disability leads to impairment which leads to a loss of function. patient has reliance on society to be cured/cared for . FOCUS IS ON THE INDIVIDUAL. THEY have to change
Social. the way that society Enables and disables disability. FOCUSES ON CHANGING SOCIETY
what ist he legal definition of mental illness only involve more severe mental health conditions?
serves as a benchmark for more extreme definition / cases
-so people can’t exploit it in court to avoid charges
What are two out of three ways of classifying ethnicity?
Biological criteria and cultural identification criteria.
Biological Criteria is the focus of the % of blood from a particular ‘racial” group. Eg used for Maori scholarship grants etc
Cultural identifications Criteria is focussed on one’s cultural identity and the groups with whom they identify.
Briefly describe the relationship between “control” and health outlines in the Unnatural Cause episode in “in Sickness and in Wealth”, and support you answer by describing the results of the “executive stress” studies presented in lecture?
A person with higher status and higher paying job means that they have less stress due to more control.
If you have the means to control your situation, then you are likely to experience less stress, than in a lower paying job where you have less opportunity to take time off work and are constantly working under someone and meeting their expectations.
If you’re under constant stress this contributes to increased amounts of cortisol being released throughout the day and even at night. Prolonged increase of cortisol leads to immune suppression. and thus worse health outcomes. Brady’s experiment was poorly designed and concluded that people in higher occupations in more control of their working and living conditions experience more stress due to having more power, however subsequent studies dispelled this and it became known as the executive stress myth.
How can relative and absolute poverty effect health?
Society’s higher levels of relative poverty tend to have higher levels off illness.
Can contribute to inequalities in health and bigger health disparities
Don’t have means/resources/opportunities to have good health etc ect
Worrying about basic things like food rather than long term health etc !!
What are the medical and social model approaches to assessing disability?
Medical Model - focuses on measuring impairment, degree of impairment (mild)
e.g. Bartel index - do you need help eating
-OPCS survey - “what is wrong with you”
Social - not a widely used tool, but would need to include measures of impairment, physical environment and attitudinal environment
Considering the “being sane in insane places” research, use the artefact and social selection explanation to interpret the conclusions of the study?
Artefact: easy to misunderstand normal behaviour - diagnosis not reliable
Social Selecting : mental illness label associated with negative consequences
Material/structural - environment counter therapeutic
What are some ethnic differences in health(biological vs social) ?
Can’t actually find genetic markers that are in every person of the same ethnic groups.
can identify with an ethnic group and not have any ancestry from that group.
There are no ethnic differences in health that can be explained entirely by a biological or genetic factor.
Better to use other explanations because even if there are genetics in play they are interacting with very complicated environmental events.
Experiences, behaviour and our environment play a much bigger part in health differences between ethnic groups than biology.
