Measurement of Health Needs and Health Care

SOCIOLOGISTS are generally aware of the presence of ill health, but the extent to which it prevails in any given population group such as a local community or a county is not generally known. Morbidity and mortality rates provide a measure of only the number of persons who have been reported to have had specified diseases or who have died. They do not indicate how many individuals are suffering from ailments which have not been reported or the number having health problems that need the attention of a physician at least to the extent of diagnosis and possible treatment. There is need for a relatively simple and economical way of measuring health needs and health care so that sociologists and other research workers may appraise in an objective manner the health status of the population. To be sure, examinations by a medical doctor would provide the necessarry information but they are expensive in terms of medical personnel and involve considerable time and effort on the part of the people. It seems unlikely, therefore, that medical examinations for even representative samples of the population can be made in the foreseeable future. As has been indicated above, morbidity rates are useful but they are limited to those illnesses and medical needs which are related to specific diseases. Other medical and health needs would not be reported. A second possible method of measuring health and health needs, expenditures for medical care by a family, likewise proves to be inadequate. At most, expenditures for health services indicate what the effective demand is for such services

Economic growth · Economics · Environmental health · Health care · Global Health Care Issues · Medicine · Psychology

• International Studies of Health Care

  John H Mabry•Medical Care•1971

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• Medical Sociology

  Howard E Freeman, Leo G Reeder•American Sociological Review•1957

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• The Committee on the Costs of Medical Care—25 Years of Progress

  Margaret C Klem•American Journal of Public Health…•1958

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• Health needs of migrant female head porters in Ghana

  Open Access•Rhanda Kyerewaa Opuni, Dina Adei et al.•International Journal for Equity…•2023

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• Disentangling the Influence of Socioeconomic Status on Differences Between African American and White Women in Unmet Medical Needs

  Jacqueline C Wiltshire, John Wiltshire et al.•American Journal of Public Health•2009

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• The family as a basic unit in health and medical care

  Open Access•Theodor J Litman•Social Science & Medicine (1967•1974

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