Beata Tobiasz-Adamczyk

Although clinical trials are rarely of interest to medical sociologists, in the last decades there has been increased focus on the processes of medicalization as well on the social critical approach to these multidimensional phenomena by health sociologists. From the perspective of the sociology of illness, clinical trials could be perceived as a bridge between the ‘society of remission’ and ‘risk society’. Public opinion polls did not give a clear answer regarding the social attitudes and the level of social trust presented by Poles towards clinical trials although patients or healthy volunteers are the main subject of this research. Creating an atmosphere of social trust (using the role of mass-media) towards clinical trials (through social awareness, methods of investigation and using the results in everyday medical practice) gives a chance to create a new ‘quality of relations’ between scientific teams responsible for clinical trials and society.

The objective of this article is to show the health status of the older population throughout European countries and indicate the data needs for a comprehensive comparative analysis of health status and its risk factors. The article briefly discusses definitions of health status in older age and presents adequate health status indicators. It discusses life expectancy, healthy life expectancy, disability adjusted life expectancy, the main causes of death as well as the prevalence of long-term illnesses, multimorbidity and functional health limitations across European countries, pointing out regional differences of the health status of older people. Next, several behavioural risks of poor health occurring in older age are shown: smoking, alcohol overuse and falls. The article concludes by demonstrating the need for more detailed, comparative and standardized data on the health status of older people across European countries, presenting sex and age-specific morbidity and health limitations as well as health risks.

Acknowledgments

This publication arises from the project Pro-Health 65+ which has received funding from the European Union, in the framework of the Health Programme (2008-2013).

The content of this publication represents the views of the authors and it is their sole responsibility; it can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Commission and/or the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers or any other body of the European Union. The European Commission and/or the Executive Agency do(es) not accept responsibility for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Publication is financed from funds for science in the years 2015-2017 allocated for implementation of an international co-financed project.

Relations between social support, social network, social ties, and risk of death and health-related quality of life have been shoved based on well-documented data from different countries as well as using the data coming from studies performed in different cohorts of older citizen of Krakow