ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how social factors are important for health. It compares the dual nature of medical sociology. The chapter discusses the account for the emergence of new infectious diseases. A major development in the study of health and disease is the growing recognition of the relevance of social determinants. Social factors are also important in influencing the manner in which societies organize their resources to cope with health hazards and deliver health care to the population at large. The earliest works in medical sociology were undertaken by physicians and not by sociologists, who tended to ignore the field. Medical sociology did not begin in earnest until after World War II, in the late 1940s, when significant amounts of federal funding for sociomedical research first became available. Under the auspices of the National Institute of Mental Health, medical sociology's initial alliance with medicine was in psychiatry.
