[Demand for healthcare from families]

Households are the social units that mediate the relationship between individuals and the health system. Households provide the basic conditions for health, as well as the services related directly or indirectly with medical therapies. The range of demands on the health system is widening constantly, and it is forseeable that in the near future the activities of prevention, rehabilitation, reproduction, aesthetics and identity production, as well as with social organization, will become more important than the strictly curative tasks. The role played by new types of families has to be underlined, as well as the role of immigrant families, a manifestation, at the health level, of the consequences of globalization. The study offers much information published for the first time and ends with a forecast of the changes in the health care demands in Europe, due to demographic transformations.