Original ResearchBeyond the Golden Era of public health: charting a path from sanitarianism to ecological public health
Section snippets
The path to the Golden Era
Public health thinking and action incorporates a theory of progress, rarely discussed and not always evident in practice. At its core is JS Mill's utilitarian notion that the purpose of public policy and of the state is, or should be, the advancement of the conditions of the many, including the most vulnerable. Utilitarian ethics, it has been claimed, remains the lynchpin for good public health policies even today.1 Realistically, not all political systems or political elites have regarded
Is the Golden Era of public health coming to end or just under strain?
The WHO has identified the top ten current causes of death worldwide, with ischaemic heart disease at the top.33 The WHO, however, does not venture into futurology or identify long-term risks. Yet there is increasingly strong evidence of major threats ahead. Rockström and colleagues, for example, have presented a much cited overview from an eco-systems perspective,34 echoing the findings of the UN's 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.35 At the same time, social analysts of health point to
The crisis of public health thinking: where are the certainties?
All of the above points to the need for a fundamental rethink in public health. It is often taken for granted that the bio-medical model of public health has primacy but in recent decades it has become a truism that an increasing proportion of health problems are found in behavioural patterns with causation linked to culture and about which bio-medicine has little to say; parallel to this is the shocking impact of persistent religious intolerance along with geo-political instabilities, both
The crisis of institutions and powers: what drives change?
Although achieving social progress requires some model of social change, it has been the simple practicality of public health measures in the past, rather than quality of their theorisation, which in large part explains their success. On the other hand public health proponents are also Enlightenment dreamers, seeking a more rational, more just and more responsible world, one achieved through better information and evidence, scientific rationality, public involvement and open debate and the
Is the public health movement addressing the right vectors?
The question of the place of public health goes much further than a pragmatic or ideological or intellectual debate. The models vary in how they conceive of progress and how they fit this new economic, social and cultural landscape. In our view, public health practice and its associated movements have been corralled into too narrow a policy terrain, forced to employ models and institutions inherited from the 20th century, or earlier, which are not fully appropriate today. Indeed, what powers
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Funding
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Competing interests
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Advancing socio-ecological considerations in impact assessment of extractive industries: A realist interview study in the Canadian context
2024, Environmental Science and PolicyRelational health: Theorizing plants as health-supporting actors
2021, Social Science and MedicineCitation Excerpt :More recent articulations of the human connection to nature include the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health's (Whitmee et al., 2015) conception of ‘planetary health’ that theorizes humanity's interdependence with planet Earth, and the Canadian Public Health Association (Canadian Public Health Association, 2015) concept, the ecological determinants of health (EDoH), that recognizes the health-supporting role of the biosphere and its systems. Though these approaches are multiple, it has been noted that they have, for the most part, been marginal in impact on both policy and practice in mainstream medicine and public health (Butler and Friel, 2006; Hancock, 2015; Lang and Rayner, 2015). This general oversight of the role that nature plays in supporting health is well illustrated in my field of food systems studies where healthy food is considered healthy because of its nutrients (biomedical approach), because of the food retail environment (see Egger and Swinburn's (1997) ‘obesogenic environment’), or the financial and physical accessibility of healthy food (food security) as opposed to considering the impact of food and its production on the ecological systems of which it is a product (Elton, 2021).
Data mining and machine learning techniques applied to public health problems: A bibliometric analysis from 2009 to 2018
2019, Computers and Industrial EngineeringCitation Excerpt :However, public health involves a far wider range of problems, such as climate change, the use of tobacco and its derivative products, domestic violence, racism and vaccines (Association, 2019). The consequences of industrialization have impacted biodiversity, ecosystems and the climate on Earth (Lang & Rayner, 2015), causing health problems for the population regarding air quality (Zhu, Wang, Zhang, & Sun, 2012), water pollution (Bichler, Neumaier, & Hofmann, 2014) and other issues. The discussion over the importance of public health has been highlighted in news reports as well as in academia.
Pursuing a Low Meat Diet to Improve Both Health and Sustainability: How Can We Use the Frames that Shape Our Meals?
2017, Ecological EconomicsCitation Excerpt :Such an approach agrees with sociological thinking on practices (i.e. structures of actions) and contexts (Reckwitz, 2002), which complements a frame-based approach. The views about frames expressed in this paper may contribute to the work that is being done on the conceptual integration of food, sustainability and health, which builds on newly articulated frames, such as ‘ecological public health’ (Lang and Rayner, 2015). Part of this work aims to identify foods and diets that are both healthy and environmentally sustainable (Heller et al., 2013; Mertens et al., 2017).
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!
2016, Public HealthPlanetary health: Creating rapid impact assessment tools
2024, Evaluation