Health and Epidemiology: Sociological Issues - Coursework Example

1 Health and Epidemiology: Sociological Issues Explain why the health of the town of Roseto changed over time. The town of Roseto can be considered as an ideal example of the impact of sociocultural conditions on the human health. More specifically, Roseto, this Italian and American community in Pennsylvania, seems to be differentiated from all modern communities. The town has been traditionally a place where the social life had a significant role in the citizens’ life. As it is stated to the relevant report [1], ‘at one time the village came to be a living laboratory demonstrating that neighborliness is good not just for the body politic (community) for the human body (self) as well’. In this context, it has been found by the medical researchers that the resistance of people in Roseto against a common illness, the heart attack, has been far more better from all Americans – the relevant measurements showed a percentage of deaths due to heart attacks reduced to almost half of relevant percentage that refers to America. This observation could be characterized as impressive if considered the current living conditions of people in Roseto (as described in the relevant report). More specifically, it has been found that ‘the men of the village smoked and drank wine freely; they spent their days in backbreaking, hazardous labor, working 200 feet down in nearby slate quarries; at home, the dinner tables each evening were laden with traditional Italian food, modified for local ingredients in ways that would drive a dietitian to despair’. Under these terms, the resistance of local population to the heart attacks (as it has been measured and evaluated by the relevant medical researches) does not seem to be explicable. Moreover, it has been proved that the rate of deaths from heart attack has been limited (instead of increased). A study that began in 1966 showed that ‘since 1966, Rosetos cardiac mortality traced a unique graph; nationally, the rate rises with age; in Roseto, it dropped to near zero for men aged 55-64; for men over 65, the local death rate was half the national average’. In other word, in Roseto a gradual improvement of peoples’ health has been observed by the medical community. It seems however that there are several reasons that can explain this ‘phenomenon’. First of all, a subsequent study of Roseto [1] has showed that ‘all of the houses contained three generations of the family’. In other words, people retain their family relationships at the highest possible level trying to live together with the elderly. Moreover, it has been proved that ‘all of the communal rituals--the evening stroll, the many social clubs, the church festivals that were occasions for the whole community to celebrate--contributed to the villagers good health’. The use of work as a tool for the improvement of the life in community – not just for personal gain – has been another factor that made Roseto a unique case of good health in America in the past decades. However, it seems that over time the style of life has been changed in accordance with the development of technology and the new standards of human relationships as imposed by the modern lifestyle. More specifically, it is stated in the relevant report [1] that ‘as people moved and achieved material success, they found those gains at the expense of traditional communal values with which they have been raised’. The effects of technology and wealth in the lifestyle of community have been radical. As a consequence, the level of health began to decline reaching the normal level of all American communities. In this context, Roseto can be considered as a characteristic case of the impact of sociocultural conditions on the people’s health. The relationship of socioeconomic status and social life with health has been examined by an Australian research which led to the following results (Burdess, Ch.8): ‘those of low socio-economic status will suffer from higher mortality, higher levels of disability and have a greater likelihood of having a serious chronic illness or having had recent illness. People with the lowest socio-economic status have the highest rates of premature death and hospitalisation and are at greatest risk of premature death’. In accordance with the above, when people in Roseto started to differentiate regarding their social lifestyle and their traditions, the impact of modern way of life was direct. Local population started to face the common problems with all people across America. The rate of heart attacks which has been used as a measure of comparative research is just an indicative element of this differentiation in health in local population. 2. Identify all the major findings of the 2 Whitehall studies The first Whitehall study referred to the ‘risk factors for cardiovascular and respiratory disease in British civil servants’ [2]. As it is explained in the report related with this study, the choice of the particular part of the population has been based on the feasibility of retrieving data, i.e. British civil servants have been chosen for this ‘experimental study’ mostly because it was easy to retrieve data on the particular health problem referring to them. A first interest finding of the above study was that ‘people at the bottom of the hierarchy had a higher risk of heart attacks’ [2], in other words heart attack in case of British civil servants was not connected with the position of employees in the hierarchy. The expected result should be that employees in the lower positions should face an increased risk of heart attack. A more ‘impressive’ finding is the fact that ‘the lower you were in the hierarchy, the higher the risk’ [2]. On the other hand, the above findings referred not only to heart attacks but to all major causes of death i.e. to ‘cardiovascular disease, to gastrointestinal disease, to renal disease, to stroke, to accidental and violent deaths, to cancers that were not related to smoking as well as cancers that were related to smoking’ in accordance with the statements made by the Professor Donald who started the above research. The findings of the above research are really impressive. It seems that ‘poverty’ (as it can be related with people in the lower positions of the hierarchy) can be a factor leading to severe health problems [3]. The intervention of sociocultural conditions of course could possibly alternate the above results. More specifically, if the traditional social lifestyle (as observed above in Roseto at its first stages of development as a community, i.e. until the 1970s) had been followed by the people participated in the above research (British civil servants), the results referring to the rate of severe health problems would be different. It should be noticed that the first Whitehall study was set up in the decade of 1960’s. Because of the importance of the findings of the first Whitehall study for the medical community, after its completion the medical researchers decided to proceed to a second Whitehall study. This was in mid 1980s – i.e. twenty years later. The first important finding of the second Whitehall study was ‘the social gradient in health was as steep as it had been twenty years previously, hadnt got any less, and that fitted with national data’ [2]. In other words, health was still in dependence with the socioeconomic level of the people involved. However, a significant differentiation from the first Whitehall study was the fact that in the second study the researchers found ‘clear social differences in peoples experience of the workplace -- how much control they had at work, how fairly they were treated at work, how interesting their work was’ [2]. The influence of socioeconomic factors on the people’s health had a more ‘specific’ description; it could be related with the employment conditions of the participants. In the above context, the researchers found that psychological attributes like hostility, can be directly related with the health condition of a particular employee (in fact of any person with similar sociocultural characteristics). Another significant issue that has appeared through the second Whitehall study is that the medical researchers should try to explicate ‘how the sets of values translate into peoples perception of reality, and that, in turn, changes physiology and leads to risk of disease’ [2]. The explication of this issue could possibly help many people to develop an appropriate psychological approach in all employment – related issues in order to avoid the risk of a severe problem of health. The above target should be achieved more easily if this effort could be related with all personal activities, i.e. all the aspects of a person’s daily life. References Burdess, N. Class and health, Ch. 8 ‘Health in Australia’ The Roseto Effect, case study, available at http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/14_2%20The%20Roseto%20Effect.htm [1] The Whitehall Study, available at http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Marmot/marmot-con3.html [2] Results of Whitehall Study, available at http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/crr_pdf/2002/crr02422.pdf [3] Read More