Very relevant reflection! it reminded me that while working for a Foundation aiming at improving chronic diseases continuum of care, I went to a very beautiful small town in an underserved area of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Interviewing the primary care unit, all physicians reported that their main problem wasn't diabetes and hypertension itself, but the local water springs pollution and Schistosoma mansoni disease prevalence. It became very difficult for me to continue motivated with the project and not being allowed to adjust it to the "water" of health, in a really comprehensive and systemic approach. There is an urgent demand for more sponsors, universities, health administrators, to interact with other sectors such as infrastructure, sociology, and economics. Compartmentalization is outdated in Health.
"In order to have clear water, we need clarity of thought around the issues central to health."
This helps to explain the approach I have now taken in the classroom. Moving away from the traditional model of focusing on an individual's "moral obligation" to do what is "healthy," but rather having students consider "the water" and the daunting task of thinking optimal health is possible when adverse social conditions and overwhelming competing demands that hinder too many of the paths to a long, healthy life.
This awesome blog post reminded me of an op-ed I once wrote when I was doing my MPH: "...The implication raised here is to return to the public health view of upstream causes of health. This means policy action in income security,education, housing, nutrition/food security, and the environment to improve health among all populations, especially among socially disadvantaged groups.1 Accompanying this step is the transition from medicalization to “healthization”– lifestyle and behavioral causes and interventions – turning health into the moral rather than the moral into health.2 Doing so creates efficacious communities and stronger families, which serve as mediating institutions that can screen out the individual and social effects of disease.5 Put simply, the key could be a form of strong community self-help.3" https://www.academia.edu/8715662/The_Medicalization_of_Human_Conditions_and_Health_Care_A_Public_Health_Perspective
Thank you for this article. We can't very well separate our health and wellbeing from our environment and our access to resources. They are inextricably linked.
Social inequalities in health status are, perhaps, the best documented phenomena in all of public health. Unequal access to quality health care is often invoked as a possible explanation, but does the social gradient in health vanish if all members of a population have equal access to the same high-quality care? The recent publication, “Social inequalities in antidepressant treatment outcomes: A systematic review,” (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-020-01918-5) explores this question. However, more research is needed to investigate how the social worlds of disadvantaged populations may produce elevated risk for a variety of biomedical disorders AND relatively poor treatment outcomes for those disorders even when access to quality care is not a factor.
Approximately 25 million infections and >400,000 deaths in the USA as at 23 January. How many of those are infections and deaths of health and care workers? Does the population and/or government care enough to capture and report this data? Or is it only Kaiser Permanente and The Guardian that count the deaths of health and care workers?
Very relevant reflection! it reminded me that while working for a Foundation aiming at improving chronic diseases continuum of care, I went to a very beautiful small town in an underserved area of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Interviewing the primary care unit, all physicians reported that their main problem wasn't diabetes and hypertension itself, but the local water springs pollution and Schistosoma mansoni disease prevalence. It became very difficult for me to continue motivated with the project and not being allowed to adjust it to the "water" of health, in a really comprehensive and systemic approach. There is an urgent demand for more sponsors, universities, health administrators, to interact with other sectors such as infrastructure, sociology, and economics. Compartmentalization is outdated in Health.
"In order to have clear water, we need clarity of thought around the issues central to health."
This helps to explain the approach I have now taken in the classroom. Moving away from the traditional model of focusing on an individual's "moral obligation" to do what is "healthy," but rather having students consider "the water" and the daunting task of thinking optimal health is possible when adverse social conditions and overwhelming competing demands that hinder too many of the paths to a long, healthy life.
This awesome blog post reminded me of an op-ed I once wrote when I was doing my MPH: "...The implication raised here is to return to the public health view of upstream causes of health. This means policy action in income security,education, housing, nutrition/food security, and the environment to improve health among all populations, especially among socially disadvantaged groups.1 Accompanying this step is the transition from medicalization to “healthization”– lifestyle and behavioral causes and interventions – turning health into the moral rather than the moral into health.2 Doing so creates efficacious communities and stronger families, which serve as mediating institutions that can screen out the individual and social effects of disease.5 Put simply, the key could be a form of strong community self-help.3" https://www.academia.edu/8715662/The_Medicalization_of_Human_Conditions_and_Health_Care_A_Public_Health_Perspective
Thank you for this article. We can't very well separate our health and wellbeing from our environment and our access to resources. They are inextricably linked.
Social inequalities in health status are, perhaps, the best documented phenomena in all of public health. Unequal access to quality health care is often invoked as a possible explanation, but does the social gradient in health vanish if all members of a population have equal access to the same high-quality care? The recent publication, “Social inequalities in antidepressant treatment outcomes: A systematic review,” (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-020-01918-5) explores this question. However, more research is needed to investigate how the social worlds of disadvantaged populations may produce elevated risk for a variety of biomedical disorders AND relatively poor treatment outcomes for those disorders even when access to quality care is not a factor.
Approximately 25 million infections and >400,000 deaths in the USA as at 23 January. How many of those are infections and deaths of health and care workers? Does the population and/or government care enough to capture and report this data? Or is it only Kaiser Permanente and The Guardian that count the deaths of health and care workers?