Reflections on the relationship between health and society in the contemporary Italian context

Abstract

Focusing on the social management recommended by the 1978 Conference of Alma-Ata, the present study aimed to reflect on how Italian family doctors experienced the relationship between health and societies in the experience of their practices. A field study with a qualitative approach and exploratory-descriptive nature, carried out) in 2007, in the province of Rome, Italy, with Italian family doctors. Performed according to the perspective of everyday bioethics, the analysis revealed that the anthropological-social dimension in the experience of the Italian family medical practice depends on the context in which such practice occurs, and that (risk) social risk management, in the individual sphere, is a common constitutive aspect. It could be concluded that, when dealing with the relationship between health and societies, from a moral dimension towards an ethical practice, it sets the possibility of fulfilling the ideal of making Primary Health Care the center of national health systems.