EPIDEMIOLOGY IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

The techniques and principles of epidemiology, so successfully utilized in the study and control of communicable diseases, should be applied to other mass phenomena in the community. The local health officer should apply them in his “diagnosis” of the sicknesses of his organized community. Epidemiological methods have been used to study mental diseases as well as chronic diseases, and an experiment in using epidemiological methods on the county level to study psychosocial disorders has been carried out. The impact of psychosocial episodes on somatic diseases is now generally accepted and well documented. Individual practitioners of medicine are becoming more interested in the significance of social tensions on the health of their patients. Public health physicians, specialists in preventive medicine, are the best equipped by training and experience to take the leadership in the application of epidemiological methods to sociomedical problems and are in a unique position to assist their colleagues in the private practice of medicine in providing modern helpful and meaningful health protection to their patients. Organized medicine might well become more cognizant of the sociological changes taking place in the nation as they relate to health and assume the responsibility for aggressive leadership in the anticipation of and the solution of these problems.