Lecture 1: An introduction to complexity

Question 1

What is epidemiology?

Answer 1

“The study of the occurrence and distribution of health-related events, states or processes in specified populations, including the study of the determinants influencing such processes and the application of this knowledge to control relevant health problems”

Question 2

What are the definitions of medical humanities?

Answer 2

• A series of intersections, exchanges and entanglements between the biomedical sciences, the arts, the humanities and the social sciences (Whitehead & Woods, 2016:1)
• A bridge between science and [lived] experience, cultivates key virtues in health professionals via reflective, interpretive, reflexive practices, promotes health care as a learned profession rather than technical competency alone, provides moral critique and political aspiration (Cole, Carlin & Carson, 2015:9-11)

Question 3

What is the world health organisation’s definition of health?

Answer 3

• “a state of complete physical mental and social
  well being and not merely the absence of disease
  or infirmity” World Health Organisation (1946)

(culturally inclusive enough ? Spirituality?)

Question 4

What approach is the following entangled health definition?

“access to and control over the basic material and nonmaterial resources that sustain and promote life at a high level of satisfaction” Baer, Singer and Susser (1997)

Answer 4

a political economy approach

Question 5

What approach is the following entangled health definition?

• “a set of common sense ideas which we have all been learning since childhood about our bodily processes, the way in which we monitor them, and the standard
  rhetorical devices which we use to describe them” Kleinman (1988)

Answer 5

(interpretive aspect – medical anthropology)