Societal Change Medical Sociology

The two videos assigned for this week, the Ted Talk with Dr. Wilkinson and the clip from John Oliver’s show on HBO, both discuss the topic of social inequality and health. Dr. Wilkinson’s talk focuses on “macro” factors, the major uncontrollable by the individual, external forces (economic, demographic, technological, natural, social and cultural, legal and political) which influence health (via stress, a topic we will cover later in the term) while Mr. Oliver focuses on a specific tangible issue that disproportionately affects those of lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Which of these approaches:

1) the call for large-scale societal change

or

2) addressing specific issues disproportionately present in poorer communities and known to produce negative health outcomes

do you feel is the most useful for understanding the causes of socioeconomic disparities in health? Which do you feel is the most useful in terms of shaping public policy to address these socioeconomic disparities in health?

Choose one of the approaches listed above to answer each question and make your case for why you chose the way you did.

You will be graded on your initial reply as well as your replies to 2 classmates (or 2 replies to one classmate).

Initial replies to the prompt are due Wednesday by 11:59 pm, the 2 replies are due Friday by 11:59 pm. Resources for Discussion Assignment

The following videos provide additional instruction on key concepts in this module.

Societal impacts on health caused by inequalityLinks to an external site.
Social Class as a fundamental cause of health: The Flint Lead CrisisLinks to an external site..