Pursuing Health and Wellness: Healthy Societies, Healthy People - Softcover

Segall, Alexander; Fries, Christopher J.

9780195430677: Pursuing Health and Wellness: Healthy Societies, Healthy People

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195430670 ISBN 13: 9780195430677

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2011

This innovative new book unravels many of the prevailing mysteries surrounding the pursuit of health and wellness today. Focusing explicitly on health rather than illness, Persuing Health and Wellness analyzes the way in which health and the conditions necessary for wellness are unequally distributed within society and argues that healthy societies foster healthy people. Organized into three parts, the text examines the sociological foundations of the discipline and health as a social construct before looking at the social determinants of health; the structural and behavioural factors that influence it; and the informal and formal components of the health-care system. Students will learn about the guidelines for measuring health, while considering personal, professional, and public responsibilities in the quest for good health. Engaging and comprehensive, Pursuing Health and Wellness advocates the creation of healthy societies in which people can engage in the active pursuit of healthy living and is essential reading for all students studying the sociology of health.

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About the Author:

Alexander Segall is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba in Canada. He is a Health Sociologist whose academic career is devoted to the interdisciplinary study of the social dimensions of health and illness, and has been published in a number of scientific journals including major Health Sociology and Aging journals.

Christopher J. Fries is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Manitoba in Canada. He is a sociologist of health, medicine, and the body whose primary research interests are in health lifestyles and behaviour, critical public health, the social determinants of health, and complementary/alternative medicine and medical pluralism, or the existence of multiple systems of health care practice and belief.

Review:

"Very readable-the authors do not talk down to students and I appreciate their willingness to make an explicit argument for the students to consider."--Ariel Ducey, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Calgary

"The first section of the book (theoretical approaches and measurements of health and illness) provides a very thorough overview of the field of health sociology. I also like how the theoretical approaches in the first section are re-introduced in later sections as they are applied to understand specific issues in health...The authors do a good job of differentiating between personal and structural explanations of health and illness."--Lisa Strohschein, Associate Professor of Social Structure and Policy, University of Alberta

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