Health and medicine are more than just biology: social forces can affect us and cause disease. Medical sociologists like me study these forces by considering society itself as our laboratory. Health and illness are our experiments in discovering meaning, power and inequality, and how these affect every aspect of a person’s life.
For example, why do low-income communities continue to have higher mortality rates, despite improving social and environmental conditions across society? Fundamental research in medical sociology reveals that access to resources such as money, knowledge, power, and social networks significantly affects a person’s health. Medical sociologists have shown that social class is linked to numerous diseases and mortality, including risk factors that influence health and longevity. These include smoking, overweight and obesity, stress, social isolation, access to healthcare and living in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Furthermore, social class alone cannot explain these health inequalities. My own research examines how inequalities related to social class, race, and gender affect access to autism services, especially among Black single mothers who rely on public insurance. This work helps explain delays in autism diagnosis among black children, who often wait three years after their parents’ initial concerns before receiving a formal diagnosis. White children with private health insurance typically wait between 9 and 22 months, depending on age at diagnosis. This is just one of many examples of inequalities entrenched and deepened by the medical and educational systems.
Medical sociologists like me research how all of these factors interact to affect a person’s health. This social model of illness considers that illness is determined by social, cultural, political and economic factors. We examine both individual experiences and societal influences to help address health issues affecting vulnerable populations through large-scale reforms.
By studying how social forces shape health inequalities, medical sociology helps understand how health and illness extend beyond the body and into all aspects of people’s lives.
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Origins of medical sociology in the US
Medical sociology formally originated in the United States after World War II, when the National Institutes of Health began investing in joint medical and sociological research projects. Hospitals began hiring sociologists to address issues such as improving patient compliance, doctor-patient interactions, and medical treatments.
However, this early work focused on issues specific to medicine, such as quality improvement or barriers to medication adherence. The goal was to study problems that could be directly applied in the medical field, rather than questioning medical authority or existing inequalities. During that period, sociologists viewed illness primarily as a deviation from normal functioning that caused impairments requiring treatment.
For example, the sick role concept, developed by medical sociologist Talcott Parsons in the 1950s, viewed illness as a form of deviation from social roles and expectations. According to this idea, patients were solely responsible for seeking medical care to return to functioning normally in society.
In the 1960s, sociologists began to criticize medical diagnoses and institutions. Researchers criticized the idea of the sick role because it assumed that illnesses were temporary and did not consider chronic illnesses and disability, which can last for long periods and do not necessarily allow people to deviate from their life obligations. The sick role assumed that all people had access to health care and did not consider how social characteristics such as race, class, gender, and age can influence a person’s experience with illness.
Parsons’ sick role concept also emphasized the doctor’s experience rather than the patient’s experience with the illness. For example, sociologist Erving Goffman demonstrated that the way care was structured in nursing homes determined the treatment of patients. It also examined how the experience of stigma is an interactive process that develops in response to social norms. This work influenced researchers’ understanding of chronic illness and disability and laid the foundation for later debates about what is considered pathological or normal.
In the 1970s, some researchers began to question the model of medicine as an institution of social control. They criticized how the jurisdiction of medicine was expanded to many social problems, such as old age and death, which were defined and treated as medical problems. Researchers criticized the tendency to medicalize and apply labels such as “healthy” and “sick” to increasingly important aspects of human existence. This shift emphasized how a medical diagnosis can carry political weight and how medical authority can affect social inclusion or exclusion.
The critical perspective aligns with critiques of disability studies. Unlike medical sociology, which emerged through the medical model of illness, disability studies emerged from activism and research in defense of the rights of people with disabilities. Rather than viewing disability as pathological, this field sees it as a variation of the human condition rooted in social barriers and exclusionary environments. Instead of looking for cures, researchers are focusing on increasing accessibility, human rights, and autonomy for people with disabilities.
A contemporary figure in this field was Alice Wong, a disability rights activist and medical sociologist who died in November 2025. Her work amplified the voices of people with disabilities and helped shape the way the public understood disability justice and access to technology.
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Structural forces shape health and disease
By focusing on social and structural influences on health, medical sociology has contributed significantly to programs that address problems such as segregation, discrimination, poverty, unemployment, and lack of school funding.
For example, sociological research on racial health disparities encourages neighborhood interventions that can help improve overall quality of life, increasing the availability of affordable nutritious foods in disadvantaged neighborhoods or initiatives that prioritize equal access to education. At the societal level, large-scale social policies, such as guaranteed minimum incomes or universal healthcare, can dramatically reduce health inequalities.
Medical sociology has also expanded understanding of how health policies affect health, helping to ensure that policy changes consider the broader social context. For example, a key area of medical sociological research is the increasing cost and limited access to medical care.
This work focuses on the complex social and organizational factors of health care delivery. It highlights the need for greater state and federal regulatory control, as well as investment in the groups and communities that most need attention.
Modern medical sociology ultimately views all social problems as health problems. Improving people’s health and well-being requires improving education, employment, housing, transportation and other social, economic and political policies.
*Jennifer Singh is an associate professor of Sociology at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
This text was originally published in The Conversation
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