Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Sara's avatar

I think that social epidemiology's challenge is less that it does not recognize nuance and complexity fo what drives behavior and more that it does not have effective tools for addressing the social forces that drive health. That's why drugs like ozempic are attractive - it is a tool that can be identified and purchased.

At the same time, I think public health as a whole has drifted away from a foundational tenets and toolkits - like sanitation, surveillance and population-level intervention. In our "post-war" condition, why are we not throwing weight behind air cleaning both for infectious disease and pollutants? Why have we allowed our surveillance systems been undercut and diminished? Why do we promote individual health risk assessment without offering either adequate (fulsome!) education on what risk looks like or simple, data-based tools in order to effectively evaluate it? People are TRYING, but public health has gone quiet.

I think public health practitioners, because they are scientists, are afraid to get political, but it is clear that certain political-economic forces (eg, capitalism) are killing people. At least in the US, the population is begging for enlightened leadership and radical challenges to the status quo. We have worker shortages, drops in test scores, chronic absenteeism, people demonstrating in the streets, soaring rates of mental health issues, dire climate reporting, rampant mistrust of government, etc, there is only opportunity here for public health to step in and show a better path forward.

Expand full comment
Frank's avatar

"In my academic and professional life, I have been, broadly defined, a social epidemiologist, concerned with the social structures that generate health"

White men account for 75% of suicides, White women account for another 15% of suicides, and men of all races account for 80% of suicides. Have you studied the disproportionate suicidality of those demographics?

Expand full comment
6 more comments...

No posts