Reference no: EM133806740

Question

One point made in Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine is physicians and public health professionals frequently acknowledge that societal factors, including poverty, political violence, racism, gender inequality, and war, influence who becomes ill and has access to care. Nevertheless, formal frameworks that connect social analysis to routine clinical practice are rarely developed from this insight. A propensity to ask exclusively biological questions regarding biosocial phenomena has resulted from the growing "desocialization" of scientific research brought on by the emphasis on molecular-level phenomena. There is an urgent need for biosocial understandings of medical phenomena, particularly for public health professionals who work with impoverished people. One approach to describe societal structures that put people and populations at danger is through the phrase "structural violence." Without an understanding of the social determinants of disease, many medical and public health efforts will be unsuccessful. Improving the lives of people we care for and addressing the prevalence and consequences of chronic infectious illnesses like HIV/AIDS may be accomplished with an understanding of structural violence (Farmer et al. 2006).