Summary
Contents
How do we understand health in relation to society? What role does culture play in shaping our experiences of, and orientation to, health and illness? How do we understand medicine and medical treatment within a sociological framework?
Evaluation
Evaluation
Evaluation refers to the use of social research methods to assess the extent to which a policy, programme or service is implemented and achieves its goals.
Evaluation in the health field involves assessing, in a structured and rigorous way, whether public health programmes and health care achieve their intended goals, including improving health and quality of life, and at what cost. Evaluation is a generic term that can equally be applied to assess the value of any area of public policy such as education, welfare benefits, and transport or penal systems. However, the high costs and high public profile of modern health and health care systems have made evaluation an increasingly important feature of developed countries’ health policies. Those paying for health interventions, such as ...
