Walter E. Boek

Social stratification and health practices in child-bearing and child-rearing.

ONE WAY of obtaining a picture of community health practices is to solicit information directly from the people who make up the community. These practices may be expected to vary among population subgroups, the variation being associated with cultural differences as well as with income, education, and other indexes of social stratification. Recent approaches of American social science to public health have utilized a concept of social class based upon individual assessment of family characteristics observable at interview. Quantitative scales have been developed which are believed to reflect subcultures within our population. Although there is a high correlation between cultural subgroups and such factors as income and education, these social classes or subculture groupings should more clearly reflect behavior and practices than those of income, education, or residence alone.

Health, social status, and the life cycle

Abstract An attempt has been made, with the use of a graph showing social status as it correlates with age in the human life cycle, to consider life as a continual experience in which infancy, youth, adulthood, middle age and old age merge smoothly into one another as integrated parts rather than separate entities. 11 Man is not new on earth, but having 10 per cent of a population reaching 65 years is a phenomenon known only in modern times and then only in a few societies. This accomplishment should now stimulate the development of methods which will delay the tendency of individuals to fall back into the stages of life where they become dependent on others. It is necessary to stress what the aged may do for themselves along with what society may do for them. The principle that people age most successfully when they have discovered or created for themselves effective positions and roles in the very societies of which they are a part needs to be remembered. 10 Society may look abstract, but the core is still interaction between humans. The aging problem may seem difficult and elusive, but the essentials are still human behavior, beliefs, and ways of doing things, as well as the love, trust, and respect of one person for another.

social science applied to the dynamics of community process

Board that he expected to emphasize mental health during the next year, since each year he and his staff put special concentration on one problem area in their educational program. The doctor’s second step was to bring up the mental health problem in a conversation with the top leader in his community’s power structure. His manner of handling this was to tell the leader that some people had begun to talk about the problem and that he felt the leader should know about it. This