Social Care Vs. Social Model Of Health

Society is constantly changing and as society changes, so does the health of the population, including the primary causes of illness, disability and death. To find the most effective ways of treating health problems, which are often complex and difficult to understand, models are used to analyse them. These models must be updated so they stay relevant as society and health problems change. This assignment will examine why, over time, many healthcare systems have shifted to social models of health, rather than the biomedical model, by comparing their relative benefits and evaluating the effectiveness of two social models in explaining smoking, a current threat to health.
Health, as defined by WHO in 1948, encompasses all the mental, physical

More attention would be paid as to who contracted communicable diseases and how, as social models seek to identify the social and economic causes behind diseases and then manipulate them. In fact, the decline in communicable diseases is largely attributed to the social and economic changes during the late 19th and the 20th century (such as improved sanitation and sewage systems, increased purchasing power, more nutritious diets, better quality housing and general increases in living standards) (Cockerham; Ferrante). The effects on the patient’s social and mental health would also be discussed (Engel). Meanwhile, a health system using a social model for a non-communicable chronic disease would be better placed to identify and understand the factors that lead people to make unhealthy choices, which would mean that policy-makers could design interventions with the knowledge of the issues and causes, resulting in effective, targeted policies that may prevent others from also making those choices (Borrell-Carrio, Suchman, & Epstein). On an individual level, the social model would lead to better clinical outcomes for patients, as the physician’s increased understanding of smoking-promoting factors enable them to support patients in making healthier choices, and also be better equipped to address social and psychological problems associated with the disease, as these are incorporated in the model

vaccinations or antibiotics, meaning treatment using the biomedical model can have a significant effect (Mishra, Oviedo-Orta, Prachi, Rappuoli & Bagnoli, 2012). However, the best way to improve population health outcomes in the case of non-communicable diseases is prevention as many are not easily curable or incurable (Cockerham). This means those who have not yet been identified as “sick” but are at risk of making unhealthy choices, and damaging their health, cannot be effectively treated using the biomedical model, as it is not designed to prevent disease but rather act in a purely reactionary way. The biomedical model focuses on proximal causes of disease (causes that are “close” or an immediate precursor to the disease), which hampers it from causing widespread change and subsequent improvement in health. In contrast, social models act as tools to identify causes of illness at both the proximal and distal level (distal factors are structural aspects of society that influence prevalence of disease, for example, income inequality) and therefore inspire health-promoting interventions and policies (such as progressive taxation) which protect those who are not yet sick but may make unhealthy choices (Viner, Ozer, Denny, Marmot, Resnick, Fatusi & Currie, 2012). Ergo, social models are more effective at preventing non-communicable diseases from