Reflective Journal Submission 1

Nicholas Horton, 2150171

20 March 2017.

In week 2, there was a strong focus on collaborative work to convey key ideas and topics

present in health education. I felt that my group had a creative way to present our topic of

Social Medicine and Public Health. In the group, I wanted to reinforce the idea of social

medicine and public health over time, along with how difficult it was for the different

classes to receive treatment in the early stages of medicine (Germov, 2014). After week 4s

workshop and reflecting on this presentation, I can see that my character was suffering

from what I believe to be problems with his health and indirectly, his well-being. At the

time, we did not put much thought into the setting, but now I would explain that it was in

Australia in the early twentieth century where, according to the textbook, Second Opinion,

public health had become part of the nation-building project in Australia (Germov, 2014,

p. 11) and despite disagreement from doctors, public health became a priority for all classes

because infectious disease knew no class barriers (Germov, 2014, p. 11).

Also in week 2, we were asked questions about society and I came to realise that I am

slightly disappointed in the way society is in todays world as I described our society to be

that of high privilege and technology driven. Two things that I believe were not as relevant

in the past and we were better off with less of. We discussed questions about puppetry and

strings, which I immediately saw to have a strong correlation with society and todays world.

This, in turn made me think about the way the evolution of medicine has been controlled by

the governments of the time where people who may or may not have adequate medical
resources available are like puppets controlled by the government and professionals who

decide on how this evolution unfolds (Germov, 2014).

We looked at sociological imagination templates, relating them to us as individuals and then

to a popular topic of health. Reflecting, I thought about my life and saw that my values and

beliefs through my family are very strong within me and my lifestyle. I find sociological

imagination templates to be vague and to think of applying it to educating students on

health seems confusing. The historical and structural factors would be straightforward for

students but when I address the cultural and critical factors of health for teenagers,

diversity scales endlessly with the way that classrooms have become so different in terms of

culture and up-bringing (Germov, 2014). However, thinking critically, during the workshop

in week 4, I came to an understanding of how complex these categories are when

addressing global health. In my opinion global health and the social model of health or new

public health (Germov, 2014, p. 16) would need to be addressed in the classroom and

would link into unfair working conditions in foreign countries. With that though, how are

teenagers supposed to learn about this when it is influenced by so many other factors that

make the subject broader including environment or geography, living conditions,

accessibility to health care, power, culture and economy? Especially, as I have learned from

chapter 3 in the textbook, when terms such as well-being and wellness (Heil, 2014, p.

41), which would be applied to those people in struggling global health situations, are so

transparent between individual opinions (Broom & Germov, 2014).

Word count: 545.

 References

Germov, J. (2014). Imagining Health Problems as Social Issues. In J. Germov (Ed.), Second

Opinion: An Introduction to Health Sociology (4th ed., pp. 5-22). Melbourne, Vic: Oxford

University Press.

Heil, D. (2014). Well-Being and Wellness. In J. Germov (Ed.), Second Opinion: An Introduction

to Health Sociology (4th ed., pp. 40-58). Melbourne, Vic: Oxford University Press.

Broom, A. & Germov, J. (2014). Global Public Health. In A. Broom & J. Germov (Eds.), Second

Opinion: An Introduction to Health Sociology (4th ed., pp. 63-80). Melbourne, Vic: Oxford

University Press.