ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the ideas put forward in the Introduction concerning the interface between the medical-biological sciences, the social sciences and the planning of health care. It begins with a short account of the important research which has been conducted in this connection into the utilisation of health care in the West. After a short review of recent utilisation studies in the Third World, it goes on to deal with the specific nature of research in this field on the basis of processes of socio-economic change, transculturation and multiple utilisation of plural medical systems used in the study.
As a result of recent developments within Western health care, a number of questions have been raised and problems have arisen which the social sciences could help to solve. Such developments include the shift from an acute to a chronic morbidity profile of the population, the widening of the definition of illness and the concept of health, the developments in preventive health care, the exponential growth of welfare services and mental health care, and the increasing organisation and planning of health care in order to make it more relevant to society (Nuyens et af. 1973).
