The scope of medicine has expanded during the last few decades to include not only health problems of individuals, but those of communities as well. Health development is essential to socio-economic development as a whole.
Social Medicine is mainly concerned with the health situation, with the measurement of population health, and with genetic, social, and environmental factors influencing human health, disease, and disability, health needs and demands, health care system and its components (structure and function), health policy (health programmes), evaluation of health systems and services, health legislation, health economy, health insurance, the relation between health and social care, informatics, and health management.
The goal of Social Medicine is to contribute to the population health, to define the health problems and needs, to identify means by which these needs can be met, and to evaluate the extent to which the health services and other activities do meet these needs.