HLTHAGE 1AA3 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Alternative Medicine, Medicine, Medicalization
12 Oct 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
HLTHAGE 1AA3
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Lecture 1
Why do we need critical health studies?
Health
• About the body and biology
• Choices- What we eat/Lifestyle
• Good health and bad health is not a choice
Illness
• Feeling sick
• Happens in an institutional setting
• Visit medical professional about it
Medicine
• Profession/Medical school
Health + Illness + Medicine= Health Studies
1. What counts as health, illness and medicine in one place or time may differ
greatly from another
Ex: Social Anxiety disorder
• Cultural context/ medical context
• 20 years ago it was just a character trait but now is diagnosed as a disorder
2. Personal, cultural, social, political economic factors all help shape our definitions
of these concepts
Ex: Looking at how/why a certain disorder or disease is the way it is and how it is
seen from many different perspectives
3. Health studies as a discipline seeks to understand how these concepts are
conceived and which factors influence the way we understand them
Ex. How mini golfing may cause a disease or disorder
Health Studies Approach to Health
• Focus on overall wellbeing rather than a narrow emphasis on the processed and
components of a person’s body
• Focus is not merely on individually either- groups and communities also have health
status
• Draws from early WHO definition of health as “not merely the absence of disease but a
state of complete physical, mental and social well-being
• A healthy person is content, physically well, at a good place in their lives, has their basic
needs and met and has the capacity to meet those needs
Disciplinary Perspectives
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Health and illness have social, political, cultural and economic dimensions beyond the
bio medical perspective
• No single perspective or way of thinking
• Combining many ideas and specific methods to understand complex ideas
• Try to get many perspectives so decisions are not bias and is fair (the big picture)
Ex: Why a certain neighbourhood has levels of obesity
• Sociological Approach
- Come to the conclusion that a lot of people have office jobs
- Economist ApproachConclude that cost of vegetables have tripled which leads to
more buying of unhealthy foods
• Anthropological Approach
- Conclude that fast food culture is popular since they have money to spend, without
time to go to sit down restaurants they rather go to fast food joints
• Psychologists Approach
- Conclude that people in the neighbourhood are stressed or diagnosed with
depression which leads to emotional eating
• Geographer Approach
- Concludes that due to the lack of parks and gyms that people don’t have time and
places to work out and burn the food they eat
In Short…
• Health is an incredibly complex manner, far more so than most of us realize
- How are health and health care socially and culturally constructed?
- What are they ideologies, principles and powers underpinning health care and
health systems?
- What are the health challenges facing individuals and how are they experienced?
- Critical Approach
Challenging Institutional Norms and Power Relationships
• Simply because ideas on health are offered by people in authority, they should be
automatically being accepted
• Health policies and services are subject to political and economic whims and
necessities- these should be discussed and analyzed
• Recognition of the facts that lay peoples own knowledge and experiences also manner
• Understanding medical and academic expertise as construction rather than indisputable
fact
Ex. Consider Food Labels
- Reflect many types of power relationships
- Why do we need certain types of certain things every day?
- Result of a political process; government approved scale
- Similar to the Canadian food guide
Critiquing Social Practices
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Health: about the body and biology, choices- what we eat/lifestyle, good health and bad health is not a choice. Illness: feeling sick, happens in an institutional setting, visit medical professional about it. Health + illness + medicine= health studies: what counts as health, illness and medicine in one place or time may differ greatly from another. Ex: social anxiety disorder: cultural context/ medical context, 20 years ago it was just a character trait but now is diagnosed as a disorder, personal, cultural, social, political economic factors all help shape our definitions of these concepts. How mini golfing may cause a disease or disorder. Ex: why a certain neighbourhood has levels of obesity: sociological approach. Come to the conclusion that a lot of people have office jobs. Economist approachconclude that cost of vegetables have tripled which leads to more buying of unhealthy foods: anthropological approach.
