Original scientific paper
THE CROATIAN FAMILY: DEMOGRAPHIC, EPIDEMIOLOGICAL AND HEALTH TRANSITION AND THE NEW SYSTEM OF HEALTH CARE
Stjepan Orešković
; Faculty of Medicine, Zagreb
Antun Budak
; Faculty of Medicine, Zagreb
Abstract
A healthy family is one of the key pre-requisites of the biological,
spiritual and material reproduction of a nation. It is the family that
in the form of a traditional extended family assumes by far the greatest
burden of illness and social support to the weak and ill. What
role, engulfed by such changes, does the nuclear family itself play,
and what on the other hand, the newly formed "families"? The dynamics
of health and sickness of the Croatian family has been
observed through mutual influences of different forms of health
behavior: the clinical model, the role-realization model, the
adaptational model and eudemonistic model of health/sickness
behavior in the family. On the level of institutionally led reforms,
the democratic transformation of Croatian society reaffirmed the
free choice of doctors, defined the rights and duties of the population
in health care adapting them to economic possibilities,
stressed the need of licencing and relicencing health workers etc.
ln contrast to usual notions and expectations which are the result
of theoretical models dealing with the roles of the nuclear family
itself in health care, our analysis has shown that the contemporary
Croatian family within the process of demographic, epidemiological
and health transition takes upon itself the great burden of
illness. Improving primary health care and clearly defining the role
of the family doctor represents the possible answer of the health
policy to the newly developed situation. For such health policy
measures strong support can be found in tradition: Croatia was
the first country in the world that understood it was necessary to
educate a special, sufficiently and specifically trained family doctor/
general practitioner. In the near future complex tasks await this
medical profile: the quest for an answer to health/ethical issues
how to preserve mental, social and reproductive family health in
processes of deinstitutionalization of marriage, pluralization of family
forms, development of the recomposed family, of those forms
that have until recently been designated as atypical and deviant.
The answers to these changes have yet to be given by the new
health system as well as the university and post-university programs
of education and specialization of family doctors.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
32353
URI
Publication date:
1.7.1995.
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