Family health care: with special emphasis on the USA

Urbanization and specialization has led to fragmentation of health care. Not only has the whole individual hbeen lost sight of, but the family unit has been ignored. Recent attempts to reconstitute primary care or family medicine concepts have often failed because the focus remains primarily upon individual health care. Family health care foxuses upon the family unit as the primary target of health behavior. The family has a "family health estate". As such the family unit is shown to have the capacity to promote health or produce illness among its memebers. A family's health is defined as its capacity to effectively cope with illness events. The family is a mediator of life stress, a defining agency of health and illness events, and a determinant of health care utilization. The physician can fill six roles in family health care: health educator, health counselor, anticipatory guide, recruitor of resources, crisis intervenor and family therapist.