Questions

1- Which of the following critiques does Klein offer of “health”?

Select one or more:

1. Public health messages can cause physical harm
2. We are surrounded by myths about health
3. Alternative understandings of health are rarely discussed
4. What we view as “health” and “healthy behaviour” reflects commercial, governmental and

professional interests

1. Health has become a commodity
2. Govenments are intervening more and more to regulate private behaviour
3. Dieting is riskier than obesity

2- Cheek comments “we find an increase in the use of the language of transgression and metaphors

such as sin, penance and forgiveness in the writing and thinking of health in contemporary societies”.

Which of the following summarises what she is saying here?

Select one or more:

1. As our lifestyle has become more unhealthy in contemporary societies, we have more health issues

to worry about and so are more likely to break the rules of healthy living.

1. We can be forgiven for making unhealthy choices, since the temptation to live unhealthily is all

around us

1. Religious groups are increasingly urging people to live a healthy lifestyle
2. Increasingly, people talk about their health using ideas about sin or penance

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3- In the introduction to her article, Cheek defines healthism. Which of the following ideas does she

associate with healthism?

Select one or more:

1. A concern with politics as a part of a healthy life
2. An acceptance of the inevitability of death
3. Health as a promise of potential perfection
4. A link to a new health consciousness
5. A central concern with curing illness and disease
6. A constant state of vigilance around risks to health
7. A focus on collective wellbeing and the wellbeing of the community more broadly
8. A focus on the individual and private well-being

4- Which of the following claims are made within the social model of disability, according to Conrad

and Barker?

Select one or more:

1. Disability cannot be equated with an individual’s medical condition.
2. Disability is a personal tragedy
3. Impairment is distinct from disability.
4. What counts as a disability varies across space and time
5. Being disabled is a political rather than a medical issue

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5- What the problems faced by people with contested illnesses, according to Conrad and Barker?

Select one or more:

1. internet support groups encourage people to over-diagnose themselves with contested illnesses
2. people with these illnesses rarely receive disability benefits
3. people with these illnesses find it hard to get symptoms acknowledged or treated
4. symptoms are often viewed as “all in their heads”
5. diagnosing people with a contested illness and offering cheap treatments for symptoms can be a

way of avoiding expensive diagnostic tests

1. lack of funding for medical research compared to other illnesses

6- Several precursors to the social constructionist approach view the way experiences come to be

labeled as medical conditions as (in part) a process of social control. Is this statement true or false,

according to Conrad and Barker?

Select one:

1. True
2. False

7-Which of the following claims do Conrad and Barker make about subjective experiences of

illness?

Select one or more:

1. Subjective accounts tell us that individuals are not passive in the way they respond to illness.
2. Subjective experiences are taken seriously by social constructionist accounts of illness.
3. Subjective accounts of illness can be woven into a story or narrative by the person with the illness.
4. Subjective accounts of illness are useful but offer less information than medical or

epidemiological accounts of disease.

1. Subjective accounts of illness are limited by comparison to more analytical accounts because of

their partiality

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8- According to Conrad and Barker, “an illness you have to fight to get” is:

Select one or more:

1. A disability
2. A moral career
3. A contested illness
4. A stigmatised illness

9-According to Foucault, how were health problems treated in Europe up until the end of the

seventeenth century?

Select one or more:

1. There were categories like the “sick poor” or the “necessitous pauper” to describe people who

needed assistance of all kinds, including assistance with health matters.

1. Care, including health care, was exclusively provided by religious organisations.
2. Even when the plague threatened towns, states did nothing to specifically manage disease
3. People were only ever hospitalized when they were extremely ill and near death.
4. Provision of medicines was bundled together with other services including distribution of food and

clothing and care of abandoned children.

1. Most of the time, health problems were dealt with through general assistance to the poor.

10- According to Foucault, how were health problems treated in Europe up until the end of the

seventeenth century?

Select one or more:

1. There were categories like the “sick poor” or the “necessitous pauper” to describe people who

needed assistance of all kinds, including assistance with health matters.

1. Care, including health care, was exclusively provided by religious organisations.
2. Even when the plague threatened towns, states did nothing to specifically manage disease
3. People were only ever hospitalized when they were extremely ill and near death.
4. Provision of medicines was bundled together with other services including distribution of food and

clothing and care of abandoned children.

1. Most of the time, health problems were dealt with through general assistance to the poor.

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11- Which of the following statements is true of the approaches of government, according to

Foucault, to “a particularly fragile, troubled and troublesome margin of the population” (p.170) from

the eighteenth century onward?

Select one:

1. “a particularly fragile, troubled and troublesome margin of the population” come to be the main

focus of attention and intervention by those in power.

1. The “fragile, troubled and troublesome margin of the population” are not the only focus of

political attention – instead there is concern with the health of all.

12- Which of the following statements about the city in the eighteenth century are true, according to

Foucault?

Select one or more:

1. The eighteenth century city was a dangerous place because of the threats to health there
2. The eighteenth century city comes to be medicalised.
3. Parts of the eighteenth century city were mythologized as places that were particularly dangerous

to health

1. At the time, the eighteenth century city was viewed as being out of human control.
2. In the eighteenth century, the city becomes an object of surveillance and authoritarian intervention

13- What are some of the new ways in which children and parents come to relate to each other from

the eighteenth century, according to Foucault?

Select one or more:

1. For the first time, the family becomes an system for organizing kinship alliances
2. The health of children becomes the responsibility of the family
3. There are new rules for the way parents and children interact around cleanliness, breastfeeding,

being attentive and gaining enough exercise

1. Parents are now held responsible for managing childhood in a new way, with an emphasis on

ensuring the child’s survival and growth

1. The relationship between children and their parents is intensified
2. For the first time, the family becomes medicalised.
3. For the first time, children have to submit to the authority of their parents

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14- What does Rose mean when he says medicine has played a role in “making up people”?

Select one or more:

1. That medical fraud is widespread and needs to be critiqued
2. That medicine is constantly inventing new types of illness in order to sell pharmaceuticals
3. That medical knowledges are used by individuals to assess whether they are normal or abnormal,

healthy or ill

1. That medical knowledge has led to doctors and other medical people being seen as experts who

work with political authorities to shape ways of managing health

1. The history of medicine has been linked to the ways people have aimed to improve themselves

15- What does Rose suggest about the concept of medicalisation?

Select one or more:

1. That the term “medicalisation” implies a critique of extension of medical authority
2. That there is no such thing as medicalisation
3. That it has become a cliché of social analysis
4. That medicalisation has played a profound role in shaping our lives and identities
5. That critiques of medicalisation have played a role in restricting the power of contemporary

doctors

1. That medicalisation is not a problem and should not be criticised

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16- What are some of the problems of the concept of medicalization, according to Rose?

Select one or more:

1. Rose suggests that the concept of medicalisation doesn’t really explain how or why medical

authority extends into new areas, or what the consequences of that process might be

1. Rose argues that the concept of medicalisation obscures important differences between the way in

which different medical activities or knowledges work

1. Rose suggests that medicalisation can’t be used as a neutral term to describe issues that have

become part of medicine, though they weren’t in the past

1. Rose proposes that the concept of medicalization doesn’t help us explain what might be wrong

with designating a part of life a medical or health issue, when that part of life was thought about in a

non-medical way before

1. Rose points out that the term “medicalisation” implies that people who are medicalised are passive
2. Rose suggests it doesn’t offer even a starting point for understanding the changes in practices in

health that we see around us and so isn’t really useful at all.

17- Which of the following are barriers to patients owning their own medical data mentioned by

Topol?

Select one or more:

1. Patients’ lack of expertise that means they are unable to responsibly manage their own medical

data

1. The economic value of individuals’ medical data which means that corporations are unlikely to

allow individuals control of their own data

1. The need for digital infrastructure for sharing data
2. Medical paternalism

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18-Why does Topol discuss his experiences of treating people while in an aeroplane?

Select one or more:

1. To support his broader claim in this part of his chapter that medicine is in the process of being

democratised

1. to point out that a doctor need not have been involved in these cases, if the airline had the smart

phone apps to enable diagnostic assessments to be made

1. to point out that apps on smart phones can be used to distinguish between serious conditions that

need emergency treatment and less serious conditions that don’t

1. To point out that medicine has already been transformed by digital technologies

19- Which of the following does Tovey and colleagues see as driving the change in Britain from a

view of the patient as a passive recipient of health services to an understanding of them as an

informed “patient consumer”?

Select one or more:

1. The rise of new technologies for recording and sharing health information
2. Increased questioning of technocratic expertise
3. The development of advocacy organisations providing alternative perspectives on health policy

and health care

1. Conservative criticism of governments’ role in running public services such as health services, and

their promotion of individual and community involvement in such services

1. Public anxiety about professional conduct by doctors
2. The rise of Web 2.0 and social media

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20-Why do Tovey and colleagues talk about sickle cell disorders and thalassaemia?

Select one or more:

1. To emphasise that user involvement in health services is not needed because of the careful

planning that underpins the UK’s National Health Service

1. To point out that patient consumer involvement, in the form of collective action by minority ethnic

groups, has helped to achieve improvements in health services for people with these conditions

1. To emphasise the complexity of debates about user participation in health
2. To identify the fact that provision for people with sickle cell and thalassaemia has historically not

been adequate, partly because the National Health Service has been used to catering for the needs of

a predominantly white population

1. To discuss important new drug treatments that are now available to people with sickle cell and

thalassaemia

21- How do Hallin and Briggs understand the over-reporting of the H1N1 epidemic ?

Select one or more:

1. As a deliberate outcome of attempts by disease control authorities to using media coverage to raise

awareness and manage the epidemic

1. As a reflection of a culture gap between journalism and medicine
2. As an example of the limits of a view of health reporting as a representation of reality

22-What do Hallin and Briggs mean by “pre-mediatization”, when discussing the context of health?

Select one:

1. The way media often prematurely release information about novel medical treatments before they

are tested or widely available

1. The way the logic of the media comes to inform the way other groups go about tackling health

problems

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23- What do Hallin and Briggs have to say about the notion of “bias” in journalism studies?

Select one:

1. That journalism studies continues to be primarily concerned with exposing “bias” in media

representations

1. That the notion of “bias” has mostly been abandoned in favour of a focus on framing and narrative

24- Which of the following criticisms does Ayo make of health promotion?

Select one or more:

1. That the health promotion policies that are most supported are about individual behavior change,

like improving diet and increasing exercise

1. That health promotion tends to encourage behaviours, such as eating vegetables or doing 30

minutes of exercise a day, which don’t really have an impact on your health

1. That health promotion policy tends to ignore the significance of unemployment, poverty and lack

of education on health

25- According to Ayo, which of the following can be understood as part of “healthism”?

Select one or more:

1. A focus on and interest in ascetic practices that aim to improve fitness and health
2. The assumption that everyone should work to maximize their own health
3. Health consciousness

26- Ayo argues that governments have stepped back from intervening in the social determinants of

health. What are the consequences of this, according to him?

Select one or more:

1. People are encouraged to be enterprising consumers in the pursuit of health
2. An array of expert advice on dos and don’ts about health is made available to individuals
3. Both experts and corporations offer goods and services on the market for health consumers to buy
4. Citizens are left alone and unsupported to work out how to live a healthy life
5. People are dissuaded from making their own choices around health

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27- What is the view of health inequalities adopted by neoliberal philosophies, according to Ayo?

Select one or more:

1. Inequality is viewed as a consequence of the free choices of individuals
2. Inequality is seen by neoliberalism as a consequence of social forces that shape the choices

individuals make

1. Inequality is viewed by neoliberalism as a social problem that needs to be addressed through

government action

1. Inequality is viewed as inevitable

28- In what historical contexts does Diprose see a pre-emptive model of risk as originating?

Select one or more:

1. The Cold War of the 1960s and 1970s
2. The Boer War in the late 19th century
3. Terrorism since the 1970s
4. Medical and environmental disasters in the 1920s

29- What are the features of a pre-emptive approach to risk, according to Diprose?

Select one or more:

1. The need to be in a constant state of readiness
2. A view that it is import to be pro-active in warding off threats
3. A perception that harms are seen to be caused by human decisions or action
4. A perception that threats are easily predicted and prepared for
5. An understanding that threats are incalculable and unpredictable but seen as imminent
6. Optimism about the future
7. A perception of threats as being of high probability

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30- What do Nelson and her colleagues conclude about young Indigenous peoples’ awareness of and

way of speaking about health risks?

Select one or more:

1. Young Indigenous people were aware of the risks associated with inactivity, drinking and

smoking, even if they sometimes engaged in these activities

1. The young people participating in the research saw being Indigenous as a source of strength rather

than a risk factor

1. The young people people participating in the research were not aware of the risks associated with

inactivity, drinking and smoking

1. The young people participating in the research were aware of the idea that they might be seen as

“at risk” of ill health because of the fact that they were Indigenous, but they resisted this idea

e. The word “risk” was one young Indigenous people used regularly when describing their activities