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Abstract
The new community care arrangements have focused attention on assessment and on the responsibilities of health and social services. This article asks what contribution social workers can make to the assessment of older people's health based on social science knowledge, to complement health professionals whose knowledge base centres on the natural sciences. A critical appraisal of recent evidence about health concepts, health choices, the social context of health experience, lay and alternative health work and social inequalities and health experience lead to the conclusion that health is as much a socially constructed phenomenon as biologically determined. Implications of the analysis for the content of health assessment are outlined.