Social Support and Perinatal Outcome

Abstract

As critics such as Thomas McKeown (12) have pointed out, Western medicine is concerned firstly with the promotion of medical care and only secondarily with the promotion of health care. Medical care and health care are not necessarily the same thing. There are ways of caring for people's health which do not involve medical examinations, procedures, and drugs—they involve such activities as health education, preventive health care, self-help, and community support. However, since these alternative routes to health mostly lie outside the theory and practice of professional medical care provision, their impact on health and illness is largely unexamined.