Obesity: a sociological guide for health practitioners

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 362
Author(s):  
Samuel G. Grace
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Cardiovascular Disease ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Body Fat ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Obesity Epidemic ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Practitioners

Obesity is a condition of excess body fat that has been identified as one of the most serious public health problems of the 21st century. Obesity is a leading preventable cause of death globally and increases the likelihood of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and various cancers. Obesity worldwide has tripled in the adult population over the past 40 years, with 13% of the world’s adult population now obese, leading to calls for control of a global obesity epidemic. Causes of obesity can be delineated at individual, societal and systemic levels, highlighting the need for analysis that transcends the biomedical paradigm to explore the sociological influences of this condition. The pathophysiology of why obesity occurs has not changed within recent history, but the way that people live their lives and the cultural understandings that evolve within communities have. This article describes the interaction between obesity and the social environment, explores the meaning of obesity within the context of health and considers the social determinants of obesity within the community. It also discusses the influences of the professional–patient exchange in obesity, the comprehension of obesity as a disease and the challenges of addressing obesity within the healthcare system.

Public receptivity regarding “in-house” water recycling: results from a UK survey

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 109-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Jeffrey ◽  
B. Jefferson
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Public Acceptance ◽  
Willingness To Accept ◽  
Water Recycling ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Successful Employment ◽  
The Uk

Whilst the development of suitable technologies which provide opportunities for water recycling has moved on apace over the past decade, their practical application will not depend solely on effective and reliable engineering performance. Successful employment of preferred strategies and technologies will require an understanding of the social environment in which they are to be applied. The study reported below explores some of the attitudinal determinants of public acceptance of water recycling in the UK. Findings show that there is broad willingness to accept in-house water recycling as long as public health is not compromised.

Abstract P183: 20-year Secular Trend of Cardiovascular Disease Comorbidities in the United States, 1997-2016

Circulation ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 137 (suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dianjianyi Sun ◽  
Tao Zhou ◽  
Xiang Li ◽  
Yoriko Heianza ◽  
Xiaoyun Shang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cardiovascular Disease ◽  
Secular Trend ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
Metabolic Conditions ◽  
Respiratory Conditions ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Chronic Comorbidities

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been the number one cause of death and disability in the US and globally for decades, and its comorbidity complicates the management of CVD. However, little is known about the secular trend of CVD comorbidities in national representative populations in the last 20 years. Methods: Prevalence of CVD and nine major chronic comorbidities was estimated using data from 1,324,214 adults aged 18 years and older in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) from 1997 through 2016, with age-standardized to the U.S. population in the year 2000. Results: CVD prevalence in the US adult population significantly declined in the past twenty years (from 6.6% in 1997 to 5.9% in 2016, P trend <0.01in Figure a). And such trend was shown in women and whites (P trend <0.01), but not in men and blacks (P trend >0.05). We ranked the nine major chronic comorbidities (high to low) in the CVD patients (Figure b.), including (1) hypertension, (2) respiratory conditions, (3) nervous system conditions, (4) digestive conditions, (5) diabetes, (6) cancer, (7) genitourinary conditions, (8) circulatory conditions, and (9) endocrine/nutritional/metabolic conditions. From 1997 to 2016, the prevalence of CVD comorbidities including hypertension (38.8% to 50.2%), digestive conditions (17.0% to 27.1%), diabetes (10.0% to 19.2%), cancer (9.4% to 12.8%), and genitourinary conditions (4.1% to 5.2%) continuingly increased (all P trend <0.01), while respiratory conditions declined (35.9% to 27.6%, P trend <0.01). Similar trends of CVD comorbidities were observed among subgroups stratified by gender or by race. Conclusions: CVD prevalence in the U.S. adults have declined significantly in the past two decades, but rates of CVD comorbidities including hypertension, digestive conditions, diabetes, cancer, and genitourinary conditions increased substantially.

Misoprostol on trial: a descriptive study of the criminalization of an essential medicine in Brazil

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana Prandini Assis
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Essential Medicine ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Informal Markets ◽  
The Past ◽  
Legal Implications ◽  
Life Saving ◽  
The Social

Misoprostol is a medicine with a “double” social life recorded in several places, including Brazil. Within formal and authorized health facilities, it is an essential medicine, used for life-saving obstetric procedures. On the streets, or in online informal markets, misoprostol is treated as a dangerous drug used to induce illegal abortions. In the Brazilian case, despite a rich anthropological and public health analysis of the social consequences of misoprostol’s double life, there are no studies on the legal implications. This article offers such descriptive analysis, presenting and examining a comprehensive dataset of how Brazilian courts have treated misoprostol in the past three decades. It consists of an encompassing mapping of the “when, where, how, and who” of misoprostol criminalization in Brazil, pointing to the unjust consequences of the use of criminal law for the purpose of protecting public health.

scholarly journals Students’ Perspectives: How Will COVID-19 Shape the Social Determinants of Health and Our Future as Public Health Practitioners?

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 850-854
Author(s):  
Eliyas K. Asfaw ◽  
Emily S. Guo ◽  
Sarah S. Jang ◽  
Swathi R. Komarivelli ◽  
Katherine A. Lewis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Inequities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Determinants Of Health ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Public Health Professionals ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
To Come ◽  
Public Health Practitioners

We are the next generation of public health practitioners. As public health students, we acknowledge that the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic will continue to fundamentally alter the field that we are preparing to enter. We will be the first wave of public health professionals whose education is being shaped by this pandemic. For decades to come, we will be working to address the impacts of this pandemic. In this commentary, we are lending our voice to discuss and highlight the importance of considering the intersections of various determinants of health and COVID-19, including education, food insecurity, housing instability, and economic hardship. We provide a discussion on what is being done across the United States in attempts to reduce the growing health inequities. As the next generation of public health leaders, we believe that only by investing in these issues can we begin to address the social and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Examining Gambling Issues From a Public Health Perspective

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Korn
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Gambling Behavior ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Public Health Perspective ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
General Adult Population ◽  
Negative Impacts

Public health has a tradition of addressing emerging and complex health matters that affect the whole population as well as specific groups. AIDS, environmental tobacco smoke and violence are examples of contemporary health concerns that have benefited from public health analysis and involvement. This article encourages the adoption of a public health perspective on gambling issues. Gambling has been studied from a number of perspectives, including economic, moral, addiction and mental health. The value of a public health viewpoint is that it examines the broad impact of gambling rather than focusing solely on problem and pathological gambling behavior in individuals. It takes into consideration the wider health, social and economic costs and benefits; it gives priority to the needs of vulnerable and disadvantaged people; and it emphasizes prevention and harm reduction. This paper looks at the public health foundations of epidemiology, disease control and healthy public policy, and applies them to gambling. Major public health issues are analyzed within a North American context, including problem gambling trends amongst the general adult population and youth, and their impact on other specific populations. There is significant opportunity for public health to contribute its skills, methodologies and experience to the range of gambling issues. By understanding gambling and its potential impacts on the public's health, policy makers, health practitioners and community leaders can minimize gambling's negative impacts and optimize its benefits.

The Concept of “Stress” in the Biological and Social Sciences

1974 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence E. Hinkle
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Biologic Agents ◽  
Adequate Explanation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Specific Effects ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mechanical Models ◽  
Living Organisms

The concept of “stress” was applied to biological and social systems in the first half of this century because it appeared to provide an explanation for the apparently “non-specific” effects of biologic agents, and for the occurrence of illness as a part of the response of people to their social environment. Evidence subsequently accumulated has confirmed that a large proportion of the manifestations of disease are produced by reaction of the host and not directly by the “causal agents” of disease, and that the components of the host's reactions are not in themselves “specific” to any given “causal agent”; it has confirmed that reactions of people to other people, or to the social environment may influence any physiological process or any disease; but it has also indicated that the concept of “stress” does not provide an adequate explanation for these phenomena. Living organisms are highly ordered and complex biological organizations that maintain themselves precariously over a limited period of time by the interchange of energy and information with the environment. Their reactions to the environment are complex and highly ordered, are based upon information, and are communicative and “logical” in nature. Although the components are “not specific,” the reactions themselves may be highly specific to the stimulus that initiates them. These reactions are not random but are “directed” (apparently “purposeful”) and tend to preserve the integrity of the organism, and the integrity of its relation to its social group and to its environment. The concept of “stress,” which was derived partly from popular usage, and based upon 18th and 19th century mechanical models of “force,” “counterforce,” and “distortion,” does not provide a meaningful scientific description of organism-environment relationships. These are better described by other concepts. The “stress concept” was heuristically valuable in the past, but it is no longer necessary, and it is in some ways hampering at the present.

scholarly journals Terapia pracą, czyli wybrane zagadnienia nowej ekonomii społecznej

2010 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 89-104
Author(s):  
Marta Danecka
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Social Economy ◽  
Modern Method ◽  
Voluntary Participation ◽  
Job Market ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social

The article concerns the issue of social economy and social employment as one of its forms. Social employment is represented as a modern method of combating social exclusion. It is part of the principles of an active social policy, based above all on voluntary participation, collaboration and concentrating resources on the support of people fit to work, but engulfed by poverty. The author presents the various forms and functions of social employment, the groups of people who are encompassed by such aid, and the methods of reintegration in the social environment and the job market. Statistical data and the opinions of participants in these courses are used to present the results achieved by the spread of social employment schemes in the past few years.

scholarly journals Innovation and Resilience: The Global Design’s Community Response to COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 392
Author(s):  
Mariana Amatullo (Cumulus)
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Economic Structure ◽  
Community Response ◽  
Black Death ◽  
Global State ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Spanish Flu

Diseases are deeply social phenomena and COVID-19 is no exception. History teaches us that many of the major diseases of the past have catalyzed currents of change that have superseded the initial public health dimensions at their core. The 1348 bubonic plague, better known as the “Black Death”, brought about drastic and permanent changes in the social mores and economic structure of Europe. The Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918-19 resulted in one of the deadliest global pandemics of the past 100 years, leaving vast misery and economic contraction in its wake. Decades later, HIV/AIDS quickly became one of the most profoundly altering epidemics of the 20th century from a social and cultural standpoint. These examples are at once similar and different from our experiences with the global surge of COVID-19 in 2020. This pandemic has become an all consuming fact of life. In many ways it is an unprecedented crisis that has thrown us into a global state of trauma. The disruptions caused by COVID-19 have represented a challenge different in scope and scale from many other natural and man-made emergencies we have experienced before. As a result, it has been difficult to rely on a “playbook” to derive guidance about how to proceed and has forced us to operate “pre-factually” in face of uncertainty.

scholarly journals Freegaming: Mobile, Collaborative, Adaptive and Augmented Exergaming

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 287-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Levent Görgü ◽  
Abraham G. Campbell ◽  
Kealan McCusker ◽  
Mauro Dragone ◽  
Michael J. O'Grady ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Home Environment ◽  
Innovative Approach ◽  
Health Issue ◽  
Public Health Issue ◽  
Obesity Epidemic ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Holistic Interpretation ◽  
Key Dimensions

Addressing the obesity epidemic that plagues many societies remains an outstanding public health issue. One innovative approach to addressing this problem is Exergaming. A combination of Exercise and Gaming, the objective is to motivate people participate in exercise regimes, usually in their home environment. In this article a more holistic interpretation of this exercise paradigm is proposed. Freegaming augments Exergaming in a number of key dimensions but especially through the promotion of games in outdoor mobile contexts and within a social environment. The design and implementation of a platform for Freegaming is described and illustrated through the description of a sample game.

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