The health status of a population defined by deliberately chosen indicators can be treated as one of principal elements of the civilization progress constituted by the development of the public health area, i.e. improvement of particular indicators relating directly to the health of the population. Within different societies this process runs at different rates and has different priorities. The activities aiming at increasing its dynamics and rationalizing its targets may contribute to the civilization progress in its health dimension.

The paper is an attempt to apply a taxonomic method of international comparisons in order to set the population health development goals. The method is illustrated by the example of 28 EU countries. The health status of the populations of these countries has been operationalized in the set of six indicators. On the basis of applying the method some procedures of setting out the development perspective within the population health area is illustrated using the example of Poland.

The level of effectiveness of mass-media influence on population health is determined by a number of factors, some of which are barriers to effective communication, others support it. The aim of this article is an attempt to present elements of the process of  cooperation between representatives of public health institutions and public television, at the stage of creating health information and its dissemination. The analysis of this process, based, inter alia, on the findings and observations made within sociology and public health, will be aimed at identifying barriers to effective media impact in the field of health education, as well as remedies that can minimize potential failures.

The article seeks to characterize and interpret the “Kashpirovsky phenomenon”, which was part of the context of the first stage of the system transformation (1990–1993).The extent of the popularity of this healer and his ‘health sessions’ was a kind of challenge to medical sociologists (the ‘teletherapy’ was watched by 59% of adult Poles).The text shows changes in the picture of typical civilization diseases taking place against the backdrop of rapid, deep and radical social changes bringing with them a number of severely felt stressors at the time. It also describes the method used to analyze two collections of personal documents/letters/addressed to TVP (Polish Television) by viewers of Kashpirovsky’s programs; in the first stage there 1907 documents of this type, and 1311 in the second. The obtained results made it possible to discern the types and effects of somatic and psychosomatic changes described by the viewers (positive or negative), to register the types of diseases (ailments) that viewers expected to be cured, to interpret popular, commonsense knowledge about health and disease, inter alia: ‘lay etiological concepts’, ‘presumed causal relationships’ between their own illness and Kashpirovsky’s methods, and to describe thaumaturgic phenomena caused, in the opinion of the authors of the letters, by the healer, etc.

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 occurrence and morbidity of cancer increase with age. The aim of the study was to ascertain the beliefs of older people about the access to and quality of cancer care in Poland and to determine the impact of gender, age, education and SES variables on their beliefs. In 2012, a sample of 910 adult residents of Wrocław was studied by means of an interview questionnaire and quota sampling was applied.  This paper presents only the data obtained from two of the six age categories researched (N = 329; specifically the age categories: “55–64 years” and “65 and over”. It was established that more than half of the respondents evaluated the treatment conditions in hospitals negatively; most being critical of the access to the medical services for oncology. The results show a divergence between the assessment of the medical personnel’s instrumental function and the care received. Although 75% of seniors positively assess the competence of oncologists, 45.29% evaluate their interpersonal skills negatively.It was found that criticism of oncological care increases with the age of the respondents and their lower financial state.

Health communication, in the opinion of Tomasz Goban-Klas, is primarily a social practice in healthcare and a field for reflection and study. The changes occurring, at the semantic and at the tool level, result ever increasing interest of scientific circles’, especially in issues included in the field of communication involving the new telecommunications media: digital, online, and mobile. This paper presents the selected levels of health communication, the medial activity of patients and medical institutions that fall within the area of analysis/social practice. The aim is to present selected concepts of medical marketing strategies and the changes occurring in the profile of the modern patient, with particular regard to the development of a technically oriented communication process. Changes taking place in the management of communication in medicine create new opportunities as well as threats. In addition, they initiate changes, which are not universally approved, in the course of interaction previously regarded as the model for contact between the patient and medical staff. Changes in the understanding of the relationships between the physician and the patient result, among others, in the creation of successive levels of communication, areas of activity and the means of reaching potential clients, as evidenced by the use of virtual space. This are is being annexed with an increasingly greater scope, hence its observation and analysis seem to be an extraordinary challenge for social scientists. An overview of the selected problem area has been based on a selective review, literature search and analysis.

New media is a space in which neuroatipical individuals can exist. They can articulate their subjectivity and construct their identity. The analysis of the webblogs of people who define themselves as Asperger Syndrome diagnosed shows how either individual or collective identity is forming. Bloggers describing their everyday life show their perspective, which is not available to neurotipical (NT) people. Thanks to online memoirs, attempts can be made to reconstruct their identity projects and analysis of adaptation strategies.