Franco S. La salud y el trabajo. [Health and work.] Cuadernos Médicos Sociales [Medical Social Notebooks] (Rosario, Argentina) 1986 March; 35:15-24.

Objectives: To present data and concepts that contribute to an understanding of the dynamic relationship between health and work and to stimulate further study of that topic.

Methodology: Analytical and interpretive.

Results: The author analyzes data from several countries, including the United States , that show a high probability of becoming sick and dying from causes tied directly to work. In spite of the dramatic nature of these data, however, they are not sufficient for understanding and changing this surprising reality. The author argues for a conceptual analysis that places the problem on a theoretical plane; he then discusses the dynamic of work and health-illness. He critiques the process by which these issues have been assimilated into a medical model in capitalist societies, with serious consequences for the health of workers. The medical model tends to define itself as curative, individualist, and influenced by biology and commercialization. The author argues that the medical model has transformed, or reduced, workers health into biological symptoms or into the sum of psycho-biological components. Prevention, when it exists, is oriented toward putting responsibility on individual workers, not on fulfilling the responsibility of entrepreneurs or the capitalist class.

Conclusion: In conclusion, the author makes several recommendations, which include: the need to institute a more proactive approach to the problem of occupational health, the inadequacy of methods that treat workers as passive subjects in research on work and health, and the importance of workers organizations and research teams working jointly in an organized and interdisciplinary way.