These are banal, very old and very conventional formulas that have become heavily weighed down lately with associations of ideas and meanings that do not all lead to optimism and festive jubilation. “Health is a fundamental human right and an indispensable factor in social development” ( WHO, Jakarta Declaration, 1997). But health risks are everywhere and can suddenly appear from the sky or the sea like the vengeful monsters of the time of legends and myths. Well-being in good health is a right, but health has become a serious and very complicated matter, even for children who play doctor.
It is now the business of experts who are increasing in number and of “health” professionals who are more and more numerous and yet who are not enough in relation to the health “needs” which are exploding or which are expressed or which are made. Health is everyone’s business and it is widely talked about in the public square and in the media, but it is also a questioning or a very intimate search that can crystallize or bring together the foundation of a personal identity.
Health as a collective phenomenon subject to public opinion
5A first element of response is offered to us in opinion studies which are in principle in direct contact with common sense and the most widely shared ideas. Health is now a matter of opinion and a political issue. Polls and surveys now define what experts characterize as manifestations of changes in the apprehension and evaluation of everyday objects that matter.
Tools called “barometers” measure variations in judgments that are considered to be indicators of the link that social groups have with these objects. Since health now occupies a solid place in the scale of identifiable values in our societies, the populations have been consulted for several years on their perceptions and their positions concerning the health field. We no longer necessarily take the pulse of the sick but we listen to the populations. In 2005, out of a representative sample of 4,000 people, 50% of those questioned believe that the state of health of the French people has improved in recent years, compared to 62% in 2000 who thought so. 28% think it has deteriorated.
The most pessimistic are women, employees and workers with a very significant gap (10 to 20 points) compared to the liberal professions and senior managers (Boisselot, 2006, Survey of the In 2005, out of a representative sample of 4,000 people, 50% of those questioned believe that the state of health of the French people has improved in recent years, compared to 62% in 2000 who thought so. 28% think it has deteriorated.
The most pessimistic are women
employees and workers with a very significant gap (10 to 20 points) compared to the liberal professions and senior managers (Boisselot, 2006, Survey of the In 2005, out of a representative sample of 4,000 people, 50% of those questioned believe that the state of health of the French people has improved in recent years, compared to 62% in 2000 who thought so. 28% think it has deteriorated. The most pessimistic are women, employees and workers with a very significant gap (10 to 20 points) compared to the liberal professions and senior managers (Boisselot, 2006, Survey of thedrees in 2005).
The report of the drees underlines that there was a marked peak of pessimistic declarations on the improvement of the health of the French in 2004 (up to 31%). Why ? Investigators associate this rise in pessimsm with an aftermath of the summer heat wave that occurred before the survey.
Another indication of location, in reflection of contemporary questions that take up very old questions, the pollsters ask the question: “How to stay in good health?”
This very recent survey gives us a first framework of the way in which we are led to reflect on what health is today. First at the level of a global and vague perception translated into positionings of relative satisfaction. Then, and more and more, in the terms of a preventive logic which declines the commandments of a new catechism of hygiene of life to which the general population and the new common sense largely adhere in public declarations of which one calculates the average but with significant differentiations associated with factors of social and demographic situations. The most adherents to the idea ” not smoking is very important to stay healthy”are those over 65, women and farmers. The least convinced are the unemployed and workers.
