Epidemiology refers to the study of health patterns and the health determinants in a given society (Berkman & Kawachi, 2000). Epidemiology forms a fundamental part in research in the area of public health and it is involved in coming up with design of research on issues such as outbreak investigation, disease surveillance which includes quarantine if need be, bio-monitoring and comparing treatment of the diseases to come up with the best treatment approach possible for a particular disease.
Due to the large scope of epidemiology in monitoring the human behavioral patterns in regard to health issues, this field encounters numerous challenges that hinder its smooth running. The first challenge is that socio behavioral epidemiology lacks the full support from the legislation in most countries. This is because social science as a subject is regarded as being soft because majority of the countries’ policy makers perceive that the most important area of study that will bring development lies in the physical sciences. This is the reason physical sciences are given more attention as compared to the area of social sciences such as epidemiology. As a result, a majority of findings that are made in socio-behavioral epidemiology aiming at improving the society’s behavior towards health related issues do not get support from the law. This jeopardizes the implementation of the findings which further hurts the contribution of behavioral knowledge in understanding the health issues (Berkman & Kawachi, 2000).
Secondly, socio-behavioral epidemiology is facing a lot to problems with keeping up with the drastic changes in the concept of health with the advent of technology which has influenced the demographic trends in the developed countries. This has resulted in changes about how people view health related issues. Prior to the twentieth century, health was perceived as only the absence of diseases in the society, but nowadays, people are more concerned about their health with the emergence of terminal illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS among other infections. This change has posed such a big challenge on socio-behavioral epidemiology on how to counter these new views of health due to the population dynamics instigated by revolutionizing technology (Cassel, 2001).
Thirdly, socio-behavioral epidemiology lacks the capacity to predict the society’s behavior in regard to who gets sick in the society, who seek medical attention that will cure their ailment and lastly, who recovers from the ailment after either seeking the medical attention from a professional medical practitioner. This inability by the socio-behavioral epidemiology departments to solve this problem has proved fatal. This is because socio-behavioral epidemiology sector cannot accurately ascertain how many ailments have been recorded in regard to a particular disease and in that particular society. Therefore, this makes it hard to strategize on how to elevate this problem. The solution to this problem is for the sector to come up with methods that will integrate the whole health science units and also understand what influences the society to behave the way it does (Cassel, 2001).
Conclusion
The above highlighted challenges that hinder the successful implementation of socio-behavioral epidemiology are not conclusive, but a representation of the numerous challenges that face this sector and thus, the successful implementation of socio-behavioral epidemiology are crucial to ensure that there is a decline in the health problems affecting the society. This can be achieved only if there is good collaboration between all relevant stakeholders that will form a genuine partnership and their collaboration will ensure that they have come up with a comprehensive consensus that will eliminate the challenges facing this sector.
References
Berkman, F.L, & Kawachi, I.(2000). Social Epidemiology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Cassel, J.C. (2001). The contribution of the social environment to host resistance. American Journal of Epidemiology, 104:107-23.