Political Sciences and Medical Sociology

Changes in public health influence social structures, family boundaries, social roles as well as political decisions significantly. Hence, scientific research is not only the duty of physicians.¹ Measures of health promotion and prevention have an effect on individuals as well as organizations and institutions.

A major task of medical sociology is to determine the important factors of health and sickness using the developed theoretical concepts and qualitative and quantitative research methods. Political sciences address the role of political frameworks as well as aspects of international co-operation and the implementation of effective prevention strategies. Therefore sociologists and political scientists shall be involved in the process of decision-making.

The diseases of the victims, like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), sexually transmitted diseases (STD) or physical state of exhaustion through exploitation, have to be treated by medical experts. However the research of causes, the analysis of the effects on the society and the individual and the development of effective prevention strategies should be handled by social sciences, within the integrative approach of the New Haven School. Hence, the following problems are highly interesting in this context:

• From which social background do the victims come from? From which the perpetrators?
• Which role models do, for example, young women have when they follow false promises into a foreign country?
• How do different societies react to those victims who manage to return to their home countries?
• What impact does the PTSD syndrome of the victims have on their future employment and reintegration into the labour market?
• Why do families abandon their relatives who come back from forced prostitution? What are the traditional role patterns and intra-family structures and rituals to promote these practices?
• What are the individual coping strategies of the victims?
• Which prevention strategies are developed by the countries of destination and which by the home countries?
• What prevention strategies are developed by the home and target countries? Are there public awareness campaigns?
• Under what conditions are preventive measures implemented and enforced at political level?
• What factors promote/ hamper international co-operation as regards the fight against human trafficking?

Literature

[1] Wolf, Christof; Wendt, Claus. Perspektiven der Gesundheitssoziologie. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 46, 2006, S. 9-33