Читать книгу Contemporary Health Studies - Louise Warwick-Booth - Страница 61

This chapter aims to give an overview of the main issues and challenges in relation to public health in the twenty-first century and to explore the key health ‘issues’ focused upon in the current public-health agenda across the UK and beyond. The importance of these issues is fully discussed at the end of this chapter, but to really understand health within contemporary society, it is essential to be able to identify what the key health issues and challenges are. Therefore, this chapter starts with an exploration of the nature of threats and factors that influence societal decisions about their magnitude. Secondly, changing patterns of health threats are outlined and epidemiological transitions are discussed. Thirdly, current key threats to public health, including both communicable and non-communicable diseases, are examined. Finally, the chapter discusses critically current threats to health such as lifestyle diseases that are inherently socially influenced. For example, illnesses associated with the over-consumption of food and alcohol, the problems of inactivity and sedentary lifestyles and risky behaviours such as unprotected sexual encounters. These issues are also discussed in more depth in chapters 6 and 8. Complete the following learning task, which will help you to think about how you personally perceive and rate health threats.