What important insights do we get from the structural-functional, symbolic-interaction, social-conflict, and feminist theoretical approaches to health and health care? How might these insights improve health care in the United States?

Question

What is an Ideal response?

Answer 1

• Structural-functional theory: Health is necessary for people to perform their daily roles. Illness threatens to disrupt the operation of a society by making the individual unable to carry out daily responsibilities. Society relieves people who are ill from daily responsibilities and encourages them to seek medical attention.
• Symbolic-interaction theory: The meaning of both health and illness varies from one setting to another, depending on what people define as normal. Because the reality of health and illness depends on situationally constructed meanings, illness and health are social as well as a medical issue, which may or may not be defined as a social problem.
• Social-conflict theory: Links patterns of health and illness to social inequality--people with more wealth have better health. Economic inequality is the major cause of poor health for millions of people. Under a capitalist economic system, the goal of the health care system is private profit rather than public well-being. To address the problem of illness, government would need to guarantee health care for all.
• Feminist theory: Because women do not have equal social standing with men, they suffer from a number of health-related disadvantages. Cultural standards of beauty and body shape contribute to eating disorders among young women. For our medical system to deal fairly with women, the social standing of women, in the medical profession and in society as a whole, must be equal to that of men.