Social Change and New Challenges for the Health Care System. Introduction to Social Change Review Special Issue

Abstract

Health problems are placed at the intersection of individual, community and society. Everything affecting society or community has implications on health issues and problems, not only at individual level, but also at society level. Social change in its diverse forms, touching various layers and fields of the social life can have a significant impact on communities and societies and implicitly on health issues. Revolutions, processes of transition, new trends of consumption, fashions, social or economic crises, all these have not only social consequences, but implications on the health of individuals and societies as well. We will further invoke several examples, not necessarily related to the articles in this issue, but pointing to very recent and intriguing social transformations that have influence on health. The labour market is a field marked by constant transformation: changes in the labour market (unemployment, ageing labour force), changes in the structure and type of work (less physical work, stress and burnout at the workplace, new workplace arrangements, temporary job contracts) and also changes in social security systems. All these can bring about new occupational diseases, new concerns for the occupational physicians and new needs for adjustments at the work place for elderly or diseased people working. As a consequence, new subfields of research have developed recently, at the intersection between health and work, in an effort to find the proper response to the above mentioned changes.