Odin W. Anderson

Perception of and Response to Symptoms of Illness in Sweden and the United States

ences in patterns of use of physicians and hospitals in Sweden and in the United States. The mean number of physician visits per person per year is about five in the U.S. and three in Sweden. Although both Sweden and the U.S. have approximately 130 admissions per 1000 population to short-term hospitals per year, the average length of stay is 13 days in Sweden compared with eight days in the U.S.15 Various reasons, including different levels of illness, contrasting methods of organizing and supplying health services, and varying perceptions of and responses to illness, could account for such differences. This paper will be concerned with the influence of perception and response on physicianuse patterns. Do people in Sweden and

Freedom and Control in Four Types of Scientific Settings

On the basis of their study of 250 research projects, three staff members of the Health Information Foundation, University of Chicago, discuss the relationship between scientific freedom, conflict, and organizational goals.

Disease, the Individual, and Society: Social-Psychological Aspects of Disease: A Summary and Analysis of a Decade of Research.

We may not be able to make you love reading, but disease the individual and society social psychological aspects of disease a summary and analysis of a decade of research will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.

Future directions in national health policy for the United States

Unlike other countries which have established some form of national health insurance, the United States is debating this profound social program in facing all problems of financing and managing personal health services simultaneously: elimination of cost at time of service, sharing this cost equitably through the tax system, distributing the services equitably goegraphically, controlling rapidly rising costs and managing the organizational structure of services. Originally in other countries the primary objectives were to free citizens of the burden of costly illnesses, improve access across income groups, and share the costs more or less equally. Now other countries are expressing the problems found simultaneously by the United States. It is argued that universal and comprehensive national health insurance spreads money and resources so thinly that specific and important problems such as pockets of high infant mortality or curable diseases are obscured and ignored. The United States sould set up a health program which targets specific problems and mitigates high cost episodes rather than indulge itself in a comprehensive and universal national health insurance. This proposal is not politically feasible, however, and predictions are made as to what will happen in the United States within the politically and culturally determined range of debatable options.

The Disability Business: Rehabilitation in America.

Prologue From Personal Experiences to Theory and Policy PART ONE: DISABILITY AS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON The Transformation of Disability into a Commodity The Production and Distribution of Disability in Society The Social Meaning of Impairment and Interpretation of Disability PART TWO: SOCIAL RESPONSES TO DISABILITY The Law and Politics of Rehabilitation The Rehabilitation Industry Rehabilitation Professionals The Marketing of Rehabilitation Goods and Services The Rehabilitation Process PART THREE: FROM SOCIAL THEORY TO SOCIAL POLICY The Consumer Social Policies for the Disabled

Swedish health care in perspective

The evolution and current problems of the Swedish health services are placed in an international comparative perspective with other industrially developed democratic states as to cost control, distribution of facilities and personnel, management of waiting lists for services, and differences in use of services. All of these countries are experiencing the same aforementioned problems differing mainly in degree. It is suggested that Sweden as well as other countries needs to reconceptualize the meaning of equality of access relative to the apparent emergence of private insurance as waiting lists grow for quality of life procedures such as lens and hip replacement. A concept of a basic service for everybody and so-called luxury service for those who wish to buy it needs to be faced in political debate. It is clear that government is unable to finance and supply the range of demand of a consumption good represented by a modern medicine. In so far as Sweden has been regarded as a model it appears that no country is a model anymore. The complexities of a modern health service has overwhelmed all countries and can be regarded as a sublime loss of innocence.

An Autobiography of a Founder of Health Services Research@@@The Evolution of Health Services Research: Personal Reflections on Applied Social Science.

The early formative social environment, 1914-1942 beginning a 50 year career, 1942-1952 the Health Information Foundation, 1952-1962 the University of Chicago, 1962-1980 the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1980-1990 lessons for applied social science researchers a self-assessment on key contributions.

Two Decades of Health Services: Social Survey Trends in Use and Expenditure.

During the decade 1953-1963, the Health Information Foundation and the National Opinion Research Center conducted three area probability sample surveys of the countrys civilian noninstitutionalized population to determine their utilization of personal health services, expenditures for services, methods of meeting the cost of services, extent of coverage under voluntary health insurance and the relationship of these factors to certain characteristics of individuals and families such as age, sex, place of residence and family income. The present volume is a detailed report of the results of the 1964 survey, reflecting the experience of the population for the year 1963, with some comparative data from the 1953 and 1958 surveys. The sample size was 2,852, with 17 per cent nonrespondents. There were a few surprises: 41 per cent of the sample still considers a general practitioner its regular source of care; of those families who have a personal physician as the regular source of care, 56 per cent have a general practitioner, 12 per cent use a general surgeon and only ten per cent use an internist and eight per cent a pediatrician; only nine per cent of ambulatory patients, aged 65 years and over, are seen in hospital clinics, whereas 81 per cent are seen in the office (and this figure has not changed since 1958, although fewer home visits are made than formerly). As expected, a strong positive correlation was found between income level and percentage of individuals seeing a physician, par-

MANPOWER RESOURCES AND LONG‐TERM ILLNESS AND DISABILITY: AN ASSESSMENT*

The problem given me to discuss is both easy and difficult. It is easy because no research was necessary since no data are available. And no data are available because many of the occupations now needed to fill out the tremendous range of occupations in the health services are just emerging or do not exist at all. My assignment is difficult because our fundamental problem is a conceptual one; it needs to be defined. Conceptual thinking requires abstracting from the welter of reality in order to provide some order for our concepts and facts to help us define our problems. By conceptual I mean the need to set up a framework to assist us in thinking through the current structure and nature of the health services system and the occupational niches within it and how it came to be this way. We need to examine the changing composition of the characteristics of patients who are entering the health system, and the characteristics of the social and economic structure from which the system emerged and how it interacts with society at large, now and in the future. You see what I mean by this being difficult. However, if I can succeed in developing a conceptual framework, then we may have a means to visualize the manpower resources in relation to the many occupational alternatives young people have today and the personal self-expression and self-fulfillment that are emphasized above duty and obligation as career objectives. In this regard the health services do not appear to stand high on the list of alternatives, with the important exception of physicians who are in a class by themselves. Even there. however, I am told there is great competition from the natural and physical sciences. The number of applications to medical schools continues to be appreciably greater than the number of openings. It is in the supporting health and health-related fields that there is and will be great competition from other sectors of the economy in seeking technically qualified personnel; realistically, I also include marriage and home making. Our relatively low age of marriage is actually a drain on the manpower resources, particularly as they affect the women-dominated occupations of nursing, teaching, physiotherapy, laboratory technology, and related spheres of work. If all young women who turn 18 in the next ten years would not get

The Roads to Social Research in Health

t is now commonly accepted that 1 the magnificent tec1mology and expertise of our health services need the assistance of fields outside of the immediate domain of medical care for increasingly effective application. This need is expressed in the fact that there are now over 700 members of the Section of Medical Sociology of the American Sociological Association, a majority of whom are engaged in research in some aspect of the health field. The great growth in research represented by this membership has been stimulated by the increase in funds from foundations and other private sources, and from government. In an applied fieId like medical sociology still fluid in terms of choice of research problems, sites for research, and variety of sources of funds, the lines of development are dependent 011 the few sociologists who are in strategic positions. Such positions are exploited very much in accordance with how the sociologist perceives problems, opportunities, and working relationships, wvhich are of course very much a function of his concept of the role of a professional sociologist in addition to his own selfimage. Rcsearch methodology as such is common to all disciplines, some disciplines using certain methodoIogica1 by Odin \V. Anderson