Making sense of families, households and care

Bernhard M. Gaede
2020 South African Family Practice  
The book – Connected Lives: Families, households, health and care in South Africa (edited by Nolwazi Mkhwanazi and Lenore Manderson)1 – is about some of the core business of family medicine. In primary healthcare, and family medicine in particular, the context of the person being treated is central. The evolving understanding of social determinants of health and disease, the linkages between biological illness with social, nutritional, environmental and political context are increasingly
more » ... nt. These shifts require health practitioners to practice differently to how many have been trained traditionally, being challenged to be much more explicit in linking clinical care to the context of the person ('patient'). Yet, it is this context that clinicians often struggle to understand how the family and households are constituted, how it 'works' and what the dynamics are.
doi:10.4102/safp.v62i1.5192 pmid:33314948 fatcat:t7vsnfitxnbwvk7idac5pnhhgq