FYI...Anne Llewellyn

----- Original Message -----
From: Rena Papadopoulos <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2000 12:29 PM
Subject: Towards a new concept of heslth


> Yet another interesting set of articles which you can find on-line.
> regards
> rena
> =============================
>
> "Towards a New Concept of Health: Three Discussion Papers"
>
> Sholom Glouberman, Sari Kisilevsky, Philip Groff and Catherine
> Nicholson
> August 2000
> CPRN Discussion Paper No. H|03
> Canadian Policy Research Networks
>
>
> PDF file [ 48p.] available at: http://www.cprn.org/cprn-n.html
> <http://www.cprn.org/cprn-n.html>
>
> "... Today, the evidence shows that among the factors that influence
> health over a person's lifetime, the health care system, itself, is far
less
> significant than the social environment. Measures of health status,
> like mortality, morbidity and self-assessment, all vary according to
> socio-economic measures like education, social class, occupation
> and income.

 The three papers in this volume reflect an intellectual itinerary, the
record of a search for a fresh understanding of health. Aristotle is
 the first stop along the way, but the authors go on to examine the
development of the concept of health from the time of Hippocrates down to
the
 end of the 20th century. They draw on that journey to propose a new
 hypothesis for understanding what they call the "health gradient" - the
path that
 shows people's health status closely parallels their socio-economic status,
regardless of the quality of the health care system available to
them.

 "What is challenging here, and hard to assimilate," Glouberman
 says, "is that this is not merely true of people who are disadvantaged: the
 very poor or the socially isolated. People with full-time jobs and
families, with
 relatively stable lives in the middle of the socio-economic ladder, are
less
 well than those above them. This disparity in health status is true
 for conditions such as heart disease and many cancers, and for
mortality."

 Towards a New Perspective on Health Policy is a CPRN project  designed to
 help policymakers tackle some of their most difficult challenges. In
 particular, researchers are focussing on inequalities in health and
 why they persist in a universally accessible health care system like
Canada's.
 This  publication is part of a major research effort to develop a new way
of
looking at health The papers in the current volume include:

(1) Social Inequality - Aristotle's Insight, by the Director of the
 Health Network, Sholom Glouberman, which draws on Aristotle's
 understanding
 of social class and its link to well-being, to underline the point that
 socio-economic status can be a determinant of health without
 being,
 strictly
 speaking, a cause.

      (2) The Health Gradient Challenge: A New Approach to Health
 Inequalities, by CPRN researchers, Sari Kisilevsky, Philip Groff, and
 Catherine Nicholson, which follows the historical development of the
 concept of health from ancient times to the present. The paper moves from
 the notion of health as simply a function of the individual organism, to
more
 modern concepts that recognize the role of the physical and social
 environments.

 Finally, it proposes an additional link - that between people's health
 and the quality of their interaction with their social context.

      (3) A Dynamic Concept of Health, by Sholom Glouberman,
 which synthesizes the results of the two earlier research efforts and
places them in the context of other developments in contemporary
intellectual
history...."

CPRN is a Canadian not-for-profit research institute whose mission
 is to create knowledge and lead public debate on social and economic
issues.

 Dr Irena Papadopoulos
 School Research Co-ordinator for Nursing and Allied Subjects
 Head of Research Centre for Transcultural Studies in Health
 School of Health, Environmental and Biological Sciences
 Middlesex University
 10 Highgate Hill
 London N19 5ND
 Tel: 0208 362 6626/7
 Fax: 0208 362 6106
 [log in to unmask]
 Why not visit our web page:
 http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/rctsh/homepage.htm

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