Understanding Public Health

Klaus Hurrelmann is Senior Professor of Public Health and Education at Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. He was the founding dean of the first school of public health in Germany and established the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence at Bielefeld University. Matthias Richter is Professor and Head of the Institute of Medical Sociology at the Martin-Luther-University, Halle-Wittenberg. For more than 15 years, he has garnered an active interest in the social determinants of health. His research and professional interests include child and adolescent research, with particular focus on explaining health inequalities.

Introduction

Part A
The Determinants of Health

1. Influential factors of health

2. The influence of social circumstances
2.1 The importance of the family
2.2 The impact of education, work and career

3. The influence of gender and life course
3.1 Health impairments in boys and girls
3.2 Health impairments at later stages of the life course

Part B
The Elements of Health

4. Social theories of health
4.1 The impact of unequal social and economic resources
4.2 Morbid social and organisational structures

5. Public health theories
5.1 Identification of the causes for the spread of diseases
5.2 Identification of optimal healthcare structures

6. Learning theories of health
6.1 The individual as active information processor
6.2 The concept of self-efficacy

7. Coping theories of health
7.1 The relationship between personality traits and health
7.2 The processing of demands and burdens

Part C
The Genesis of Health

8. Health as salutogenesis
8.1 The concept of the sense of coherence
8.2 The concept of the health disease continuum

9. The model of productive processing of reality
9.1 The relationship between socialisation and health
9.2 Coping with developmental tasks

10. The production and safeguarding of health
11.1 Health promotion and disease prevention
11.2 Prevention and health promotion in the life course
11.3 Examples of promotion strategies

11. Modules of health theory