The social component of public health in the 21st century
Abstract
The objective of this paper is to present and to discuss the prevailing ideas that state that health care systems should
be considered as social and cultural systems at the same time. To this end, a literature review on this topic was made. In
the society, medicine is mainly in charge of fighting diseases; however, the criterion that human health requires that the
organization of the society pays attention to disease prevention and health promotion has not paved its way yet. Health
care systems should be both social and cultural systems. This has led to the population health approach in which a wide
range of determining health patterns and a strategy aimed at the whole population are dealt with. The strategies should
cover a wide range of health determinants such as 1) incomes and social position, 2) education 3) physical environment
4) employment and working conditions, 5) biological characteristics and genetic conditions, 6) development of a healthy
child 7) social support networks and 8) health care services. The health care sector cannot act by itself because most of
the determining health care factors are outside its competence. This discloses the need for an inter-sector approach. The
strategy for the development of the population health policy includes three lines: 1) to strengthen the understanding
of population about the determining health factors and to promote people’s involvement in actions improving the population
health, 2) to strengthen the awareness of the determining health factors and to support the population health
approach in other governmental sectors different from the health care and in mass and social organizations, 3) to promote
and develop comprehensive interdisciplinary and inter-sector health initiatives for key priorities that may have a significant
potential impact on the population health.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Aviso de derechos de autor/a
Aquellos autores/as que tengan publicaciones con esta revista, aceptan los términos siguientes:
- Los autores/as conservarán sus derechos de autor y garantizarán a la revista el derecho de primera publicación de su obra, el cuál estará simultáneamente sujeto a la Licencia de reconocimiento de Creative Commons que permite a terceros compartir la obra siempre que se indique su autor y su primera publicación esta revista.
- Los autores/as podrán adoptar otros acuerdos de licencia no exclusiva de distribución de la versión de la obra publicada (p. ej.: depositarla en un archivo telemático institucional o publicarla en un volumen monográfico) siempre que se indique la publicación inicial en esta revista.
- Se permite y recomienda a los autores/as difundir su obra a través de Internet (p. ej.: en archivos telemáticos institucionales o en su página web) antes y durante el proceso de envío, lo cual puede producir intercambios interesantes y aumentar las citas de la obra publicada. (Véase El efecto del acceso abierto).