Archives
Editorial
New Directions
Eileen Willis
School of Medicine, Flinders University, Adelaide SA, Australia
Jane Shoebridge
Lecturer in Nursing (Social Science)
Faculty of Health Sciences
The Flinders University of South Australia
Article Text
This is the first issue of Health sociology review to be published under the auspices of eContent Management Pty Ltd. We expect this to be a very beneficial relationship for the Journal; and not the least of the benefits will be eContent's capacity to publicise the Journal widely amongst social scientists here in Australia, and internationally. This issue has six original papers. The first paper by Elizabeth Savage appraises the Federal government's proposed changes to Medicare-specifically the proposal to provide incentive payments for those GPs who bulk-bill concession cardholders. While Savage takes a measured approach to what may become the first major change to Medicare since its introduction, her concluding comment are telling when she writes:
The incentive payments are likely to have no positive impact in metropolitan areas (75% of encounters) and a very small positive impact for cardholders in rural and remote areas who are currently charged above the MBS fee (2.3% of encounters). In fact the scheme may generate adverse consequences for cardholders.
We think Savage's account provides one of the most accessible and informative commentaries on the proposed policy to date.
We are particularly pleased to present two papers by Michael Morrissey on Indigenous health. These papers continue what we hope becomes a tradition in the Journal: that is a commitment to take seriously Ian Anderson's call for sociologists and social theorists to re-engage in the field of Indigenous health research. Behind both of Morrissey's papers is the emerging discipline of health social sciences that brings together the skills and tools of epidemiology with the insights of social theory as a way of informing social action. Whatever readers may think of the claims of this relatively new discipline, Michael raises serious issues that must act as a challenge to policy makers as well as those active in the field. Importantly for social theorists who might think their contribution is by way of explanation, these two papers challenge the usual clichés offered for understanding the disparities between the health status of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
With qualitative cross-national data, Cora Baldock presents a sensitive analysis of care-giving relations between Dutch immigrants living in Perth and their ageing parents in the Netherlands. In our view students and practitioners of health sociology and the health professions can learn much from Cora's blending of migration studies, family studies and gerontology.
Together with the papers by Michael Morrissey, these three articles bring to our attention broad social science considerations of relations of inequality premised on class, race, ethnicity, age, disability and place.
The two papers by Dorothy Broom and Geraldine Treacher and Jane Edwards, Brian Cheers and Litza Graham use the literature to raise issues around gender and health, social change and social policy. In their paper on the representation of gender in publications on diabetes, Broom and Treacher illustrate the gendered and heterosexual bias of specific self-care publications. The significance of their content analysis lies in the ways in which they identify this illness as socially constructed and limited by these constructions; yet as we know diabetes is a serious chronic condition for increasing numbers of Australians.
Edwards, Cheers and Graham have written a comprehensive review of the literature on 'social capital'. The importance of fully exploring the theoretical underpinning of this concept cannot be overly stressed given the way in which it is currently being 'used' as the new motherhood statement in health care policy. Together with Jeannette Pope's paper on social capital in health research - see Health sociology review Volume 11.1 - we think the Journal provides readers with informed critique of the ways in which this sociological concept is commonly used and misconstrued.
The promised symposium by David Legge on Sociology in health professional education and public health practice will appear in Vol 12(2) due out in December this year along with a symposium on the sociology of Ageing and health edited by Eileen Clark; and one on Women's breast health edited by Lynne Hunt and Beverley McNamara. In forthcoming issues Brian Cheers and Jane Edwards from the Centre for Rural and Regional Development at the University of South Australia have agreed to edit a symposium on the sociology of Rural health; and Jason Pudsey and Michael Symonds have put out a call for papers that explore the sociology of suffering and care. Readers wishing to contribute to either of these symposia will find more information on the last pages of this issue.
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