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Many prominent health experts now assert that major improvements in the health of the American people must come from individual efforts to alter unhealthy per sonal habits and lifestyles rather than through medical services and technology. But it does not necessarily follow that a more ethical and feasible national health policy would focus primarily on exhorting Americans to mobilize their indi vidual willpower to change to more healthful personal habits. In determining the nature of such policy, three main points are essential. First, the "health and individual responsi bility" argument may overestimate the health benefits which will accrue from personal habit changes. Second, that argu ment tends to overlook or misconstrue the nature of societal constraints on individual will. It fails to specify the socio logical conditions under which millions of individuals can change their lives significantly and the role social condi tions play in maintaining unhealthy behavior and attitudes. Finally, the focus on individual decisionmaking deempha sizes the role of collective efforts, of public policy, in securing higher health standards. In essence, then, we suggest that a health policy that promotes curbing unhealthy habits and encourages healthy ones through societal action is more ethical and feasible than one focusing on "health as individual responsibility."

In this paper an analytical approach for the study of treatment and prevention programmes from a social science perspective is discussed The object of the approach is the relation between the social understanding of, eg , alcohol and drug problems and the forms and content of society's treatment efforts to meet these problems. What is suggested is a sociocultural analysis of how the different opinions in the discourse of alcohol and drug problems are expressed and reproduced in the treatment practices, and, by that, how they confirm and strengthen some opinions and practices and limit the space of other, alternative ones

AbstractPoliticians often oppose economic policies benefiting low-income Americans. However, the mechanisms behind this political inequality are unclear. I ask whether politicians oppose these policies, in part, because they underestimate how many of those they govern are struggling financially. I test this theory with an original survey of 1,265 state legislative candidates. Contrary to my expectations, I find that politicians tend to overestimate how many of those they govern are struggling financially. At the same time, there are some instances in which politicians—and Republicans in particular—do underestimate the level of financial hardship among those they govern. In an experiment, I randomly assign politicians to have their misperceptions corrected. The results suggest that politicians' policy preferences would be similar even if they had a more accurate understanding of reality. Overall, the findings suggest that politicians may frequently misperceive the state of reality in which those they govern live.