Sociology Of Health And Illness - 2519 Words

SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH AND ILLNESS This study is based on a newspaper article about obesity and how the National Health Service (NHS) will offer free cookery classes in war on the obesity crisis to overweight and obese families as well as doctors and nurses (Donnelly, 2015). The World Health Organisation (2015) has classed obesity as a worldwide epidemic that has seen numbers double since the 1980’s. The WHO (2015) define obesity as an individual having a Body Mass Index equal or higher than 30 and has been linked to non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, muscoskeletal and some cancers. There are many views on what sociology is and therefore can be defined in many ways; Giddens and Sutton (2010) define sociology as study†¦show more content†¦The report identifies that obesity is now a health pandemic in the United Kingdom and the National Health Service is taking steps to tackle obesity not only with the nation at large but also among the healthcare workers who have to help the government tackle obesity in the community seeing as they are the front line staff who would be responsible for educating the public on losing weight. Mooney et al (2015) further states that the functionalist perspective also focuses on how society is interconnected and how each part of society influences and in turn is influenced by the other parts. The doctors and nurses influence the patients they come in contact with and the rationale for the scheme in regards to the staff is that they should â€Å"practice what they preach† before they challenge the public’s unheal thy lifestyles. According to McIntosh (1996) functionalist view social problems in a diverse number of ways and argue that inequalities are normal and necessary for social systems and for the functioning of social systems there has to be a division of labour therefore there will be individuals from varying educational backgrounds as well as skill backgrounds. In the report the problem identified was obesity which not only