Community and Health

A. Role of the community

1. Traditionally communities have
placed great emphasis on caring for
their members when they are ill.
2. Recently community's role in health
maintenance and the prevention of
disease has been an increased
priority

3. Communitys provision for health

maintenance and the prevention
includes:
Protection of food, water and drug supplies
Establishment of public health agencies for
the supervision, prevention, and control of
disease and illness
Development of public education programs
Awarding grants for health education
Development of unemployment insurance
program

 Establishment of workmens
compensation insurance
Establishment of DOH programs;
establishment of social welfare services
and Phil. health programs
Supervision of health center programs

B. Health agency as a social

institution has:
1. A bureaucratic structure
2. Policies, rules, and regulations
governing behavior of its members
3. An impersonal viewpoint
4. A status hierarchy
5. An increasingly specialized
subculture

C. Hospitals as a subculture of the

community
1. Employees develop both written and
unwritten hospital policies that:
Set standards of acceptable behavior for
both clients and staf
Regulate the hospitalized clients contact
with the primary group by limiting visitors
Force both clients and staf to relate to the
secondary group
Punish unacceptable behavior by any
members of the group including the client

2. Folklores and folkways of the

hospital serve to:
Maintain the mystique of medicine by
fostering the use of a unique language
and system of symbols
Attach stigmas to various social illnesses
such as AIDS and other sexually
transmitted diseases, mental illness, drug
addiction, and alcoholism, which are
associated with certain patterns of living
and acting that are not acceptable to the
group

 Perpetuate the roles and values of the health

team members and maintain the status quo
Folklorecan be described as traditional art,
literature, knowledge, and practices that are
passed on in large part through oral
communication and example.
Folkways are standards of behavior that are
socially approved but not morally significant. They
are norms for everyday behavior that people
follow for the sake of tradition or convenience.

 Mores are strict norms that control moral and ethical

behavior. Mores are norms based on definitions of
right and wrong. Unlike folkways, mores are morally
significant. People feel strongly about them and
violating them typically results in disapproval.
Taboois a norm that society holds so strongly that
violating it results in extreme disgust. Often times the
violator of the taboo is considered unfit to live in that
society.
A law is a norm that is written down and enforced by
an official law enforcement agency.

3. Hospital has several

functions
a. Direct function- to help the client
regain health and resume a role in
society by providing services
directed toward:
Treatment of illness
Rehabilitation
Maintenance of health
Protecting the clients legal rights

b. Indirect function: to help society by

providing services directed toward:
Education of health professionals
The education of the general public
Research

D. Delivery of health services:

responsibility of the community
1. Members of the society become
active participants in prevention of
illness
2. Community-health centers care for
the ill in the home rather than in the
hospital.
3. Extended care facilities are
established with a more community
and homelike atmosphere

4. Local community leaders take an

active role in establishing health
policy for society
5. Lay members of the community
become involved with health
agencies policies and decisions
6. Health maintenance and treatment
are no longer considered a privilege,
but the right of all members of
society.