Medical sociology and anthropology are concerned with the social and cultural factors that influence health, illness, and medical systems. Medical sociology examines medicine as a social institution and applied enterprise, and how social factors relate to illness and medical treatment. Medical anthropology takes a cross-cultural perspective to study traditional and modern medical systems, and how biological and socio-cultural characteristics of groups influence health and disease. Both fields look at how social groups experience illness and how societies define, treat, and support responses to disease.

1. Introduction to Medical
Sociology &Anthropology
Zelalem B
2018

2. Medical Sociology
• Is concerned with all those aspects of
contemporary social life which has an
impact upon well-being throughout the
life-course.
• Is a sub-discipline of sociology, which
attempts to analyse social action and
social factors in illness and illness-
related situations

3. Medical Sociology
Is defined as professional endeavor
devoted to social epidemiology, the
study of cultural factors and social
relations in connection with illness, and
social principles in medical
organization and treatment.
Is the study of relationships between
health phenomena and social factors

4. Medical sociology
• Helps to identify and study social
groups in their activities of maintaining
and preserving health, alleviating or
curing diseases
• Is concerned with the social facets of
health and illness, social function of
health institutions and organizations, the
social behavior of health personnel and
consumers of health care.

5. Medical Sociology
• is the study of the societal dimensions of
health and medicine.
• Overlaps with Social Epidemiology, Health
Services Research, Behavioural Medicine,
Social Psychiatry and Medical Anthropology
• Medical Sociology, has two approaches:
• a. It sees medicine as a social institution
which one should study through sociological
hypotheses; and

6. Medical Sociology
• b. It sees medicine as an applied
enterprise that seeks to reduce the
health burdens of humans.
• Examines medicine with sociological
questions and uses sociological
concepts
• E.g. studies of institutions, health
inequalities, professions

7. Medical anthropology
• Medical anthropology is the cross cultural study of
medical systems and the study of bio-ecological and
socio-cultural factors that influence the incidence of
health and disease now and throughout human
history.
• The areas where the medical anthropologists do
research are human evolution anatomy, paediatrics,
epidemiology, mental health, drug abuse, definition of
health and disease, training of medical personnel,
medical bureaucracies, hospital organization and
operations, the doctor patient relationship and
process of bringing scientific medicine to users of
traditional medicine

8. Medical Anthropology
• The medical anthropology can be studied as a bi-
polar process whose one pole is biological in which
one studies human growth and development, role of
disease in human evolution and study of disease of
ancient man.
• The second is sociocultural pole where one studies
traditional medical systems, illness behaviour, doctor
patient relationship, introduction medicine to
traditional societies and epidemiology and cultural
ecology.
• Medical anthropology encompasses the study of medical
phenomena as they are influenced by social and cultural factors
and social and cultural phenomena.

9. Medical Anthropology
• Medical anthropology is concerned with the
bio cultural understanding of man and his
works in relation to health and medicine.
• Medical anthropology doesn't study the
relationship of individual person to disease
but studies the relationship between the
biological and cultural characteristics of a
group(ethnic or racial) and its resistance of
susceptibility to various diseases in view of
different genetic constitution

10. Medical Anthropology
• Is the cross cultural study of medical
systems and the study of bio ecological
and socio-cultural factors that influence
the incidence of health and disease now
and throughout human history
• Is concerned with the bio-cultural
understanding of man and his works in
relation to health and medicine.

11. Medical Anthropology
• Study the relationship between human
evolution and disease, the biological
and cultural determinants of disease,
health and health care, the basis of
traditional health care systems and
integration with modern medicine
• Study the interaction of social,
environmental and biological factors
which influence health and illness both
in the individual and the community as a
whole

12. Major Concerns of Medical
Anthropology & Sociology
i. Looking at how diseases in the population are
located among social groupings.
ii. Explaining how people respond to diseases
with a view to defining them in predictable ways
from the perspective of their culture and their
social class within a particular culture.
iii. Describing how society prescribes means of
treating diseases.
iv. Investigating how social institutions give
their support to the medical organizations in
their bid to treat the sick.