A Sociocultural Context: Factors in Pharmacology & Epidemiology
The quickly advancing area of Culture, health and illness is continuously expanding with newly introduced practices, beliefs, ideologies, and research from different cultures extending across the world. As the sociocultural factors in health and illness become more emphasized and discussed, concepts in health will transform and shift into an outlook that allows social, cultural, psychological, and biological factors to play a critical role in understanding these important thoughts. The main concepts examined and analyzed throughout the textbook for this week are cultural factors in pharmacology and epidemiology. In chapter eight, Helman(2007) thoroughly discusses and the different
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Although both chapters include an examination of completely different ideas in the field of health and illness, Helman(2007) intertwines these chapters by emphasizing the importance of cultural and social factors in understanding complex methods and ideas today. A vital concept that must be understood through a sociocultural lens is pharmacology and the various aspects found within it. Throughout health and illness, the effect that chemical substances and medication has on the human body is critical to understand since the ideas behind health and medicine is consistently developing. In addition, the process of a drug from the drug itself, from the prescriber, to the recipient, and the setting the drug is in are all crucial sectors to understand by emphasizing the sociocultural background (Helman, 2007). Various cultures have different outlooks, values, moral understanding, and practices that are attributed to the usage of drugs and other substances such as alcohol, tobacco, and illicit substances. Therefore, each sector of the process must be understood in this context. The drug