Sociocultural health code as a methodological approach to social studies in the field of healthcare

Abstract

The social and cultural causation of behavior in relation to health is beyond doubt among scientists. Numerous studies were carried out in this field. However, a unified approach that fully takes into account both the role of culture and the social factors of health-saving behavior still needs to be developed. We propose to turn to the methodology of the sociocultural health code of ethnic and corporate communities, which is based on the idea of culture as a semiotic information system that serves as the basis for social determinants of health. The sociocultural health code should be understood as a set of symbolic means and their meanings (connotations), which allow accumulating, preserving and transmitting information about the sphere of health. The introduction of this concept involves an integrated approach that helps determining the causes of societal actions and predicting behavior in various situations by analyzing and interpreting information markers characteristic of the society under study.