Medical sociology and public health: Interdisciplinary relationships 1950–90

Relationships between epidemiology and sociology applied to medicine are traced from the early 1950s to the late 1980s, against the background of developments taking place in the disciplines and in the career opportunities of their proponents. Negative tensions between them are ascribed to the identity crisis which public health/community medicine faced during the period, to its weak position in the hierarchy of medical specialities and to the emphasis given by sociologists to the analysis of power structures within health services. Positive tension arose from the intellectual discourse between them and the opportunities for mutual exchange of ideas.