Visit of Dutch Professors of Social Medicine

Prominent scholars in social medicine Frans Feron and Hans Bosma from the University of Maastricht (the Netherlands) visited HSE St.Petersburg at the invitation of SESL and delivered public lectures on November, 14.

Prominent scholars in social medicine Frans Feron and Hans Bosma from the University of Maastricht (the Netherlands) visited HSE St.Petersburg at the invitation of SESL and delivered public lectures on November, 14.

Frans Feron, professor at the department of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, University of Maastricht. His lecture was called «Social Medicine in Balance: how important is social for medical. Case of child and youth healthcare». He spoke about theoretical approaches to the concepts of health and social medicine. In his lecture professor Feron focused on organization and specific problems of children’s healthcare.  He told that the paradigm of healthcare is changing nowadays and medical professionals are turning from curing to prophylactics.  A part of the lecture was about equilibrium of genetic predisposition to certain illnesses and factors of social environment where children live.

Frans Feron and his colleagues mostly study children’s health. In the focus of their research are delays, disorders and retardations of their socio-emotional, physical, cognitive, gross motor and psychological health of children and adolescents. The major objectives of their research are the mechanisms of children’s development.

The sphere of professor Feron’s expertise is not classical pediatrics, but social medicine that studies links between people that can influence their health. The basic principles of social medicine are the following: 1) socio-economic factors influence on health, morbidity and medicine 2) Health is the issue of social awareness 3) Society should promote healthy lifestyles.

Frans Feron also studies how academic achievements correlate with the development of his brain and with social environment he is grown in. According to doctor’s observations, stimulation of brain activity may provide up to 25% improvement in academic achievements in comparison to no stimulation.

Professor Feron has also mentioned that the most evident problems in children’s development are usually not the most grave. That’s why it is vital to carry on profound complex medical observations every time she/he appears at doctor’s office. Doctor Feron argues that diagnostics should provide parents and specialists with child’s profile with thorough description of all his symptoms and special needs, but not stigmatize her/him with diagnosis.

As an example of a situation when parents need help of social medicine professor Feron mentioned Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Most of his time doctor Feron practices various methods of therapy and compensatory medical assistance to children with ADHD. This syndrome is predominantly genetically burdened, but is case of unfavorable social environment it may lead to serious psychological and mental diseases. In case of early intervention ADHD can be cured.

In conclusion, Frans Feron said that improper diagnostics in early age can aggravate children’s socio-medical problems.

Hans Bosma delivered a lecture on socioeconomic differences in health. In his speech he focused on the results of his academic research on how social environment and inequality influence people’s health. Some of his data was taken from a famous English Whitehall survey according to which occupation significantly correlates with premature mortality. Not only SES has an impact on mortality, but education and occupation of one’s parents as well as social environment in one’s childhood.

According to Bosma research results, for the most diseases have social dimension. In the Western societies the medical gap between people with high and low SES is constantly growing. One of the factors of this growing gap is risky behavior of people with low socio-economic status: unhealthy diet, no sport, smoking, alcoholism, rare medical examination.

Among evident differences there is a hidden key factor that influences level of morbidity and mortality. According to professor Bosma data, people with low SES are more likely to have external locus of control. It means that people accuse others in their problems, but not her/himself. They tend to have an impression that they don’t have leverage over their own lives and change anything cardinally.

Hans Bosma also mentioned that high IQ has positive impact on life expectancy, health, lack of vicious habits and leads to internal locus of control, when a person is more likely to accuse him/herself in his own problems and look for the ways to solve it.

Another notion that was made by professor Bosma is that the attempts to decrease a gap in state of health (e.g. in Great Britain) between the rich and the poor had no success. The public was really impressed by the lectures and the discussion lasted more than an hour. The next day the Dutch colleagues discussed a common project on children’s health with sociologists from SESL. More about this project in the next article.

By Veronica Kostenko