Social Theory and Public Health

Running head: SOCIAL THEORY AND PUBLIC HEALTH
SOCIAL THEORY AND PUBLIC HEALTH
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SOCIAL THEORY AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Social theory can be defined as the study of the different types of the scientific
procedures of thinking about the social life. It is mainly seen to cover up all the ideas about the
various ways by which societies modify and develop. It also tells about the methods of
explaining the social behaviors and even about the powers and the social structures (Meier,
warde & Holmes, 2018). This also include evaluation of the contributions of class, gender,
modernity as well as ethnicity and even about civilizations, utopias, revolutions as well as
numerous other concepts and problems in the social lives. Such social theories have become an
important part in the present day discussion of public health as societies and the different
determinants tend to play huge role in shaping the mental as well as physical health of
individuals living in the nation (Roberstson, 2018). This assignment would mainly provide
importance on how social theories play an important role in determining public health and how
health behaviors are modified according to such theories.
Social theories are analytical frameworks as well as paradigms that are utilized for
examining the social phenomena. In the modern contemporary social theories, certain core
themes are seen to take precedence over the others. These are the themes like nature of the social
life, different types of relationships between society and self, different types of structures of the
social institutions, the roles and possibilities of different social transformations as well as the role
structure of social institutions and others like gender, race and class (Turner, 2018).
Public health can be defined as the science that involves the protection and improvement
of the health of the people as well as their communities. This action is mainly achieved by
undertaking promotion of the healthy lifestyles as well as researching diseases and injury
prevention activities. This also accompanies proper detection followed by prevention and
responding to the different infectious diseases. Overall, the public health is mainly concerned

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SOCIAL THEORY AND PUBLIC HEALTH
with the protection of the entire health of the professionals. These populations can be either small
as well as local neighborhood or might be as big as an entire country or that of the region of the
entire world. The public health professionals are seen to prevent different types of problems that
might include implementation of the different educational programs as well as recommending
policies, administering different services and conducting researches accordingly. Public health
activities also put importance on the limiting of different disparities (Beckfield et al., 2015).
Presently, most of the healthcare professionals are seen to be focusing on promotion of
healthcare equity, accessibility as well as quality.
In the previous decades, the healthcare professionals used to mainly focus on the
biological determinants of health where the considered diseases to be mainly because of any
physical disorientation or might be due to attack of microorganism. However, such ways of
treatment were severely criticized by the recent day researchers. They have found out that
different social determinants play major roles indirectly in affecting the health of individuals in
the nation. The world Health organization had put forward ten important social determinants of
health which have the capacity to determine the quality of life of human beings resulting in
occurrence of the diseases (Collins et al., 2015). These are the social gradient system, education,
income, employment, housing, transport, food and many others. If one wants to understand how
different of such aspects of society hamper the public health, one can take the help of social
theories for greater clarification and better understanding.
One of the most important social theories that can be used as an example is the
unintended repercussions of the purposive or social actions. Sociologist Robert Merton has
proposed this theory. This theory is mainly seen to believe that there might be many social
interventions that might have many unintended consequences. Some of these repercussions can