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This interdisciplinary volume gathers selected, refereed contributions on various aspects of public health from several disciplines and research fields, including the philosophy of science, epidemiology, statistics and ethics. The contributions were originally presented at the 1st Barcelona conference of “Philosophy of Public Health” (5th – 7th May 2016). This book is intended for researchers interested in public health and the contemporary debates surrounding it.
Population health has recently grown from a series of loosely connected critiques of twentieth-century public health and medicine into a theoretical framework with a corresponding field of research—population health science. Its approach is to promote the public’s health through improving everyday human life: afford-able nutritious food, clean air, safe places where children can play, living wages, etc. It recognizes that addressing contemporary health challenges such as the prevalence of type 2 diabetes will take much more than good hospitals and public health departments. Blending philosophy of science/medicine, public health ethics and history, this book offers a framework that explains, analyses and largely endorses the features that define this relatively new field. Presenting a philosophical perspective, Valles helps to clarify what these features are and why they matter, including: searching for health’s "upstream" causes in social life, embracing a professional commitment to studying and ameliorating the staggering health inequities in and between populations; and reforming scientific practices to foster humility and respect among the many scientists and non- scientists who must work collaboratively to promote health. Featuring illustrative case studies from around the globe at the end of all main chapters, this radical monograph is written to be accessible to all scholars and advanced students who have an interest in health—from public health students to professional philosophers.
Public health is once again becoming a major political and social issue in the 21st century, especially in relation to issues such as vaccination, the threat of pandemics, bioterrorism, smoking and obesity. A diverse set of theoretical ideas have emerged recently in the legal, political, bioethical and philosophical fields that could usefully be applied to these and other issues in public health. This book provides a much needed introduction to some of the relevant philosophical concepts and arguments that might be used to build a philosophy of public health. Consisting of both theoretical contributions and case studies, this multidisciplinary collection of essays will both inform and generate debate among academics, policy makers and practitioners about these important issues in public health.
"Beyond Method provides a forum for scholars across health and human sciences disciplines to explore issues surrounding philosophy, methodology, and epistemology in the context of interpretive scholarship. The essays comprising this volume move beyond the practical descriptions or the "how to" of interpretive methods commonly found in textbooks to explore the contributions, underlying assumptions, limitations, and possibilities embedded within and across particular philosophical, methodological, and epistemological perspectives. They reveal the complexity and richness of understanding that emerges when philosophical issues are explicated within contemporary contexts, illuminating new possibilities for healthcare and human science scholarship"--Publisher description.
In a series of papers published in the 1970s, Christopher Boorse proposed a naturalist theory of health, mainly based on a value-free concept of ‘biological function’, a concept of ‘reference class’ and the notion of ‘statistical normality’. His theory has profoundly shaped the philosophical debates on the concepts of health and disease. It could even be said that the numerous criticisms of his 'biostatistical theory' are at the centre of what is usually referred to as the debate between ‘normativists’ and ‘naturalists’. Today, the predominant naturalist theory of health is still Boorse’s biostatistical theory. This volume offers the first comprehensive review and critical assessment of the nature and status of naturalism in the philosophy of health. It explores the notion of biological normativity and its relevance for the philosophy of health, and it analyses the implications of the philosophical theories of health for healthcare and the debate on health enhancement. In the first section, several contributions identify the kind of ‘naturalism’ the biostatistical theory belongs to and offer further criticisms or possible modifications, such as the concept of function that is required by this theory, and whether a comparativist approach to health is more relevant than a non-comparativist one. The second section explores natural or biological ‘normativity’ and some possible accounts of health that could be based on this concept. The third and final section focuses on the implications of naturalism in healthcare. 'Goals of Medicine’ is the first paper in which Christopher Boorse ventured toward analysing the implication of his biostatistical theory of health on the practice of medicine, the difficult issue of the goals of medicine and the boundary between treating and enhancing. Other papers in this section critically evaluate Boorse’s account and analyse the importance of a positive concept of health.
Amid ongoing shifts in the world economic and political order, the promise for future public health is tenuous. Will today's economic systems sustain tomorrow's health? Will future generations inherit fair access to health and health care? An important hope for the health of future generations is the establishment of a well-grounded, global public health system. Global Public Health: Ecological Foundations addresses both the challenges and cooperative solutions of contemporary public health, within a framework of social justice, environmental sustainability, and global cooperation. With an emphasis on ecological foundations, this book approaches public health principles-history, foundations, topics, and applications-with a community-oriented perspective. By achieving global reach through cooperative, community-based interventions, this text illustrates that the practical application of public health principles can help maintain the health of the world's people. Blending established wisdom with new perspectives, Global Public Health will stimulate better understanding of how the different streams of public health can work more synergistically to promote global health equity. It is a foundation for future public health measures to be built and to succeed.
In comparison to medicine, the professional field of public health is far less familiar. What is public health, and perhaps as importantly, what should public health be or become? How do causal concepts shape the public health agenda? How do study designs either promote or demote the environmental causal factors or health inequalities? How is risk understood, expressed, and communicated? Who is public health research centered on? How can we develop technologies so the benefits are more fairly distributed? Do people have a right to public health? How should we integrate ethics into public health practice? The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Public Health addresses these questions and more, and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising 26 chapters by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors, the handbook is divided into four clear parts: Concepts and distinctions Reasons and actions Distribution and inequalities Rights and duties The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Public Health is a field-defining and sustained reflection on the various ethical, political, methodological, and conceptual aspects of global public health. As such it is an essential reference source for students and scholars working in political philosophy, bioethics, public health ethics, and the philosophy of medicine, as well as for professionals and researchers in related fields such as public health, health economics, and epidemiology.
This work argues that philosophy is not just useful, but vital, for thinking coherently about priorities in health policy and public policy.
"In this volume, a group of leading philosophers, economists, epidemiologists, and policy scholars continue a twenty-year discussion of philosophical questions connected to the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD), one of the largest-scale research collaborations in global health. Chapters explore issues in ethics, political philosophy, metaphysics, the philosophy of economics, and the philosophy of medicine. Some chapters identify previously-unappreciated aspects of the GBD, including the way it handles causation and aggregates complex data; while others offer fresh perspectives on frequently-discussed topics such as discounting, age-weighting, and the valuation of health states. The volume concludes with a set of chapters discussing how epidemiological data should and shouldn't be used"--
"A groundbreaking approach to critical epidemiology for understanding the complexity of the health process and studying the social determination of health. A powerful critique of Cartesian health sciences, of the flaws of "functional health determinants" model, and of reductionist approaches to health statistics, qualitative research and conventional health geography. A consolidated and well sustained essay that explains the role of social-gender-ethnic relations in the reproduction of health inequity, proposing a new paradigm with indispensible concepts and methodological means to develop a new understanding of health as a socially determined and distributed process. It combines the strengths of scientific traditions of the North and South, to bring forward a new understanding and application of qualitative and quantitative (statistical) evidences, that looks beyond the limits of conventional epidemiology, public and population health. The book presents alternative conceptions and tools for constructing deep prevention. A neo-humanist conception of the role of health and life sciences that assumes critical, intercultural and transdisciplinary thinking as a fundamental tool beyond the limiting elitist framework of positivist reasoning. A most important source of fresh ideas and practical instruments for teaching, research and agency, based on a renewed conception of the relation between nature, society, health and environmental problems"--