Problems of Access to Modern Wellness Culture

Society’s growing interest to the quality of life has predetermined the development of modern culture and industry of health called “wellness.” During last decades, wellness has acquired features of new institutional complex, which integrates functions of numerous spheres related to health preservation and improvement, e.g. medicine, pharmacology, sports, leisure, tourism, manufacturing of food, goods and cosmetics. The process of popularization of wellness culture is supported by scientific and educational institutions, mass media and advertising.

From a sociological point of view the inclusion of individual into wellness culture is determined not only by the conditions of upbringing and quality of education that form motivation and skills of healthy lifestyle and consumption. The key role in this process is determined by individual’s socio-economic status, which includes income level, nature of person’s professional activity, availability of money, free time and vitality strength for active-health leisure. In this aspect, the maximum access to the values and practices of wellness culture have the elite groups, middle classes primarily in the developed countries (“the golden billion”). Not only modern medicine and wellness culture but also basic medical care stay inaccessible for the majority, namely the poor population of the world.

In the light of increasing societal need for health improvement, the effective strategies of increasing access to wellness culture is determined by the limits of economic growth, amplification of ecological barriers, the need to shift to wise consumption. Such strategies include raising people’s personal responsibility for their health, lifestyle, active-recreational leisure; strengthening financial, institutional and informational support; development of preventive medicine; using potential of leisure and local green tourism for expanding the access to health-recreational practices for people. In general, the study of health-stratification and unequal access to the wellness culture is based on integrative sociological approaches.