MEDICALIZATION IN THE MODERN AND POSTMODERN SOCIETIES

World Congress on Health and Medical Sociology

September 19-20, 2016 Las Vegas, USA

Zofia A Slonska

The Cardinal WyszyÃ?Â?ski Institute of Cardiology, Poland

Keynote: J Health Edu Res Dev

Abstract :

Analysis of the process of medicalization in the developed societies of the Euro-American cultural circle confirms its historical variability associated with the modernization of societies and their health systems. For centuries, passing the consecutive phases of modernization, the societies evolved the features that in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries enabled the clinical medicine to achieve a wide sphere of control, covering not only medical but also social areas. The phenomenon of the acquisition of medicine control over social life was named by the medical sociologists �medicalization�. In short, way we can identify �medicalization �with entering by medicine in a social life and treating the social problems as they would be the medical problems. The aim of the presentation is to analyze the process of medicalization of societies and types of societal response [passive/active] to it in the modern or postmodern context. Moreover the proposal of types of medicalization e.g. medicalization through systemic domination, technological medicalization, or commercial medicalization and their possible consequences for public health will be discussed.

Biography :

Zofia Slonska is a sociologist, Assistant Professor, Deputy Head of the Department of Epidemiology, Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Health Promotion,. Executive Board member of the European Society for Health and Medical Sociology (ESHMS) since 2010, an expert of the European Commission, and a current member of the Polish Government Population Council since 2006. In 1991, employed as a consultant for health promotion and education in the World Health Organization, European Office for Europe. In 1993-2002 a national health promotion WHO counterpart in Poland and from 1995 to 2002, a member of the European Committee for Health Promotion Development,. Former and current member of the editorial Polish and foreign scientific journals e.g. Health Promotion International (1998-2010).

Email: slonska@post.pl