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  2. worldclass.regis.edu worldclass.regis.edu
    A%20genealogy%20of%20the%20WHO%E2%80%99s%20positive%20health%20definition.pdf
    2
    1. cschehr 14 Sep 2026
      The term well-being appears in both the final UN Charter and in early drafts from July1943 (Notter, 1949: 479), but unrelated to health. A letter from Gautier to Biraud revealsthat the term was added in response to the International Labour Office (ILO)’s ‘Phila-delphia Declaration’, which spoke about ‘the promotion of . . . health, education andwell-being’ (International Labour Organization, 1944). Gautier argued that the WHOshould ‘defend the ground’ against the intrusion of ILO, which happened at a time whenhe was trying to expand the WHO’s domain to include social security, housing, andnutrition.

      Adding "social well-being" to the definition sounds like a broad, humanistic goal, but it actually started as bureaucratic turf-war posturing against the ILO. The term is so vague that it's nearly impossible to measure clinically, showing how political posturing over organizational scope shaped the language we still use today.

    2. cschehr 14 Sep 2026

      We usually take the WHO's definition for granted as an innocent, progressive standard, but its wording was actually an aggressive political push for universal healthcare. Framing health as a human right that requires government action directly challenged the private medical model, which is why it had to be smuggled past Cold War opposition.

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    worldclass.regis.edu/content/enforced/387191-AN_NR455_AN02_26FSEM/A genealogy of the WHO’s positive health definition.pdf
  3. worldclass.regis.edu worldclass.regis.edu
    The Social Construction of Illness: Key Insights and Policy Implications
    2
    1. cschehr 14 Sep 2026
      Whenmedical perspectives increasingly define obesityas an illness (rather than a risk factor for diseasessuch as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc.),policies focus on solutions such as gastric bypasssurgeries, rather than examining the role of productpromotion by the food industry or the availabilityof healthy foods in neighborhoods with high ratesof obesity.

      Labeling obesity as an individual disease completely ignores things like food deserts and how corporations market junk food. It turns a systemic food access problem into a personal medical issue, pushing high-cost surgeries instead of fixing neighborhood food equity.

    2. cschehr 14 Sep 2026
      Faced with this situ-ation, health organizations may find that givingpatients a contested illness diagnosis and providingthem with inexpensive palliatives is the mosteffective means of cost containment.

      This assumes that the increase in contested illness diagnoses comes mostly from patients pushing for answers, but it feels more like systemic burnout and cost-cutting. Giving someone a vague label and basic palliative care seems like a convenient way for systems to stop running expensive tests on "difficult" cases.

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    worldclass.regis.edu/content/enforced/387191-AN_NR455_AN02_26FSEM/The Social Construction of Illness.pdf
  4. worldclass.regis.edu worldclass.regis.edu
    A%20Brief%20Introduction%20to%20the%20Sociology%20of%20Health,%20Healing,%20and%20Illness.pdf
    2
    1. cschehr 14 Sep 2026
      Researchers use the con-cept of excess mortality—the difference between the number of all deaths in a given timeframe minusthe number expected under normal conditions based on prior years—to capture the pandemic’s broaderimpact. Any deaths over and above the expected number constitute excess deaths and can be attributableto both the direct and indirect consequences of the pandemic (e.g., deaths caused by an overburdenedhealth care system or when persons do not seek emergency care for other issues due to fear of infection).

      Using pre-pandemic death rates as the baseline benchmark assumes that "normal conditions" were equitable to begin with. In maternal-child health, baseline mortality for Black and Indigenous communities was already elevated by systemic racism, meaning this metric risks masking how existing structural inequities compounded during the crisis.

    2. cschehr 14 Sep 2026
      Mary’s is a case of vaccine hesitancy, and sociologists would look beyond her individual beliefs tounderstand how those beliefs are socially patterned and socially produced. For example, research sup-ports the idea that persons who believe COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe are less likely to get vaccinated.But research also indicates that such beliefs are not random.

      Framing vaccine hesitancy around individual beliefs assumes the core issue is a knowledge deficit rather than a rational response to structural abandonment. In rural areas, chronic clinic closures and spatial isolation destroy provider trust long before a vaccine ever reaches the market.

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    worldclass.regis.edu/content/enforced/387174-AN_NR455_AN01_26FSEM/A Brief Introduction to the Sociology of Health, Healing, and Illness.pdf