THE CROATIAN FAMILY - DEMOGRAPHIC, EPIDEM IOLOGIC AND HEALTH TRANSITION AND THE NEW SYSTEM OF HEALTH-CARE

A healthy family is one of the key pre-requisites of the biological, s piritual and material reproduction of a nation. It is the family that in the form of a traditional extended family assumes by far the greate st burden of illness and social support to the weak and ill. What role , engulfed by such changes, does the nuclear family itself play, and w hat on the other hand, the newly formed ''families''? The dynamics of health and sickness of the Croatian family has been observed through m utual influences of different forms of health behavior: the clinical m odel, the role-realization model, the adaptational model and eudemonis tic model of health/sickness behavior in the family. On the level of i nstitutionally led reforms, the democratic transformation of Croatian society reaffirmed the free choice of doctors, defined the rights and duties of the population in health care adapting them to economic poss ibilities, stressed the need of licencing and relicencing health worke rs etc, In contrast to usual notions and expectations which are the re sult of theoretical models dealing with the roles of the nuclear famil y. itself in health care, our analysis has shown that the contemporary Croatian family within the process of demographic, epidemiological an d health transition takes upon itself the great burden of illness. Imp roving primary health care and clearly defining the role of the family doctor represents the possible answer of the health policy to the new ly developed situation. For such health policy measures strong support can be found in tradition: Croatia was the first country in the world that understood it was necessary to educate a special, sufficiently a nd specifically trained family doctor/general practitioner, In the nea r future complex tasks await this medical profile: the quest for an an swer to health/ethical issues how to preserve mental, social and repro ductive family health in processes of deinstitutionalization of marria ge, pluralization of family forms, development of the recomposed famil y, of those forms that have until recently been designated as atypical and deviant. The answers to these changes have yet to be given by the new health system as well as the university and post-university progr ams of education and specialization of family doctors.