Social Medicine in the Twenty-First Century 英文参考文献.docVIP

itdoErial Social Medicine in the Twenty-First Century The PLoS Medicine Editors, Scott Stonington, Seth M. Holmes disease on the planet is attributable to the social conditions in which people live and work [4]. The socially disadvantaged have less access to health services, and get sicker and die earlier than the privileged. Despite impressive technological advances in medicine, global health inequalities are worsening. “All medicine is inescapably social,” said Leon Eisenberg [5], and we entirely agree. Take, for example, the announcement of the sequencing of the human genome, which the BBC predicted would mean we While an understanding of these large- scale forces remains social medicine’s base and one of its most important tasks, this special collection shows the ways in which ?ner-grained social forces have an equally important effect on health. The different levels at which social forces operate can be considered as four primary domains, beginning in the clinical encounter and opening outward to society and the globe. The ?rst domain, then, is made up of the cultural and social aspects of the relationship between patients and health professionals. This relationship is a social negotiation affected by beliefs, practices, interests, and power dynamics. Communication within this relationship can have a powerful impact upon health outcomes. The in?uence of this relationship upon health is not limited to Western, allopathic, biomedical systems but is equally as important in other medical systems throughout the world [11]. The second domain involves I n its launch issue in October 2004, PLoS Medicine signaled a strong interest in creating a journal that went beyond a biological view of health to incorporate socioeconomic, ethical, and cultural dimensions. For example, that ?rst issue contained a policy paper on how the health community should respond to violent political con?ict [1], a debate on whether health workers should screen all women for domesti