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Planetary Health and the Anthropocene
Published in Vincent La Placa, Julia Morgan, Social Science Perspectives on Global Public Health, 2023
Stefi Barna, Sonali Sathaye, Vanita Gandhi
From a social sciences perspective, such understandings of the role of social and economic systems, and their ecological impact, link to the theory of ‘social suffering’ within Critical Public perspectives. Social suffering focuses upon how, for instance, human consequences of war, poverty, inequality, and disease are often the result of a holistic assemblage of human problems and suffering, and which result from what political, economic, and institutional power imposes upon people (as well as the human responses to social problems as they are influenced by those forms of power) (Kleinman et al., 1997). Renault (2010) argues that social suffering theory is integral to any analyses of power and social injustice, and challenges disciplinary boundaries, traditionally established to demarcate individual and social phenomena. Combining health and social problems breaks down the boundaries between them and accentuates the interrelatedness of health and social factors. ‘Structural violence’, for example, is a type of social suffering which occurs due to social and institutional structures, such as racism, Patriarchy, and poverty, and which limits human agency and experience. Readers can refer to Chapter 12 for a more detailed focus on structural violence. The chapter now proceeds to a focus on the UN SDGs, which like Critical Public Health perspectives focuses on reductions in health inequalities and social inclusion.
Will he be there?
Published in Ann H. Kelly, P. Wenzel Geissler, The Value of Transnational Medical Research, 2013
During independence, malaria control provided an arena for the extension of the newly established state (Gerrets 2010). Nyerere’s theoretical and political starting point was the link between economic inequality and disease. His plan for Tanzania’s development, outlined in the Arusha Declaration (1967), hinged upon restructuring the health sector on the basis of socialism and self-reliance (Marsland 2006). Inspired by China’s barefoot doctor programme, Nyerere created a network of rural centres, and ultimately relocated the rural population to facilitate access (Hsu 2007). Urban malaria control was successfully integrated into the general health services, owing in large part to the participatory mechanisms Nyerere put in place to decentralize health care. In 1971, the WHO East Africa Aedes Research Unit experimented with an integrated vector control programme in collaboration with the Dar es Salaam City Council. By 1973, the transmission rate of Dar es Salaam reached its lowest point in a century, ironically just at the moment when Tanzania’s deepening economic crisis made environmental management programme economically unfeasible.
Sociological and medical conceptions of lifestyle
Published in Emily Hansen, Gary Easthope, Lifestyle in Medicine, 2007
Richard Wilkinson is a social epidemiologist who has focused much of his research on investigating causal relationships between inequality and health (1996, 2000a, 2002b, 2005). A key feature in his work is a focus on the role played by the meaning of material factors in the causal relationship between inequality and disease. Wilkinson argues that lower social status (relative poverty, social exclusion) is associated with chronic stress and social exclusion (a lack of social support) that has a physiological effect. Wilkinson views stress as socially induced, the result of social conditions rather than an aspect of an individual's psychological makeup.
Does self-perceived income priority matter? The association between income inequality and allostatic load in China
Published in Stress, 2022
Ruoxi Ding, Xin Ye, Siyuan Chen, Yanshang Wang, Dawei Zhu, Ping He
At the same time, increasing criticism on self-reported health outcome promoted the burgeoning attention and efforts in collecting biomarker data in demographic surveys (Seeman, 2001), which allow researchers to measure individual’s health status more accurately. As a novel biomarker measure of “the wear and tear on the body”, allostatic load (AL) represents the cumulative physiological dysregulation in patterns of response to environmental stress and challenges (McEwen & Stellar, 1993). From the perspective of biological risk, increased AL that resulted from stress, may disturb regular tissue and organ functioning, and further affect a wide range of health conditions in cardiovascular system, metabolic system, immune system, urinary system, and the brain (McEwen, 1998). Such theoretical inference has been confirmed by a bundle of empirical evidence, which indicated AL as a valid and powerful predictor of cardiovascular disease (Juster & Lupien, 2012), diabetes (Mattei et al., 2010), obesity (Carlsson et al., 2011), preeclampsia (Hux & Roberts, 2015), rheumatoid arthritis (Straub & Cutolo, 2001), cognitive decline (Lucassen, 2016), depression (Carbone, 2021), and the overall mortality (Mattei et al., 2010; Seeman et al., 2004). Therefore, since income inequality has been recognized as a rising environmental stressor in most of the societies nowadays (Alesina et al., 2004), it is quite rational and essential to speculate on the potential association between income inequality and AL. Is AL a key mediator to link the stress from ecological income inequality with disease outcomes in a variety of physiological and mental health system? The answer to this question will provide critical evidence to identify the downstream biological pathway of the inequality-health linkage.
Comorbidity among Danish lung cancer patients before and after initial cancer diagnosis
Published in European Clinical Respiratory Journal, 2021
Anja Gouliaev, Ole Hilberg, Niels Lyhne Christensen, Torben Rasmussen, Rikke Ibsen, Anders Løkke
Inequality in health regarding time to diagnosis, treatment and survival rate for patients with lung cancer has previously been established. Level of education, disposable income and co-habitation status have all been found to influence short-term survival [9,10]. Thus, shorter education and living alone were associated with a more advanced cancer stage at the time of diagnosis as well as an increased time between referral and diagnosis [11]. Differences in survival can partly be explained by social inequality regarding disease stage at diagnosis, treatment options and comorbidity status [12].
The Protection-Inclusion Dilemma: A Global Distributive Justice Perspective
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2023
A critical concern in global health is the inequality in disease burden worldwide. Lack of relevant clinical information for underprivileged and marginalized groups is one of the factors contributing to growing health disparities (Grasse and Collman 2021).