Primary Health Care - JOHN J. HADDAD, Ph.D.

CHAPTER 2
The ‘ologies’ (underpinning academic
disciplines) of primary health care
Summary points
1 Two medical disciplines are crucially important to the effective practice of
primary health care:
a Biomedical sciences (anatomy, physiology, pathology, cardiology, pharmacology
and so on); and
b Epidemiology (the study of disease patterns in populations, and interventions
to change these). Clinical epidemiology (evidence-based medicine)
requires judicious application of the findings of rigorously conducted
epidemiological research to individual clinical decisions.
2 However, focusing exclusively on these medical sciences would give us
a narrow and incomplete view of primary care. This chapter covers six
additional disciplines that underpin an academic perspective on primary
care:
c Psychology (the study of mind and behaviour);
d Sociology (the study of human society and the relationships between its
members);
e Anthropology (especially cultural anthropology – the study of the ways
of life and meaning-systems of groups and societies);
f Literary theory (the study of the human condition as presented in stories,
poetry and drama);
g Philosophy, including epistemology (the study of how we know things)
and ethics (the study of what we should do); and
h Pedagogy (theories of learning).
3 Each of these disciplines contains a number of key concepts and theories that
can serve as a conceptual ‘lens’through which to make observations and design
interventions. An academic approach to primary health care requires these
concepts and theories to be made explicit, for the methodological approach
and level of analysis to be appropriate to the chosen theory and for the unit of
analysis to be clearly and consistently defined.
4 Multi-level theories, though conceptually complex and challenging to investigate,
can provide rich insights into primary care issues, but should not be
equated with ‘anything goes’ methodologically or analytically.
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