What is public health? To some, it is about drains,
water, food and housing, all requiring engineering and
expert management. To others, it is the State using
medicine or health education and tackling unhealthy
lifestyles. This book argues that public health thinking
needs an overhaul, a return to and modernisation around
ecological principles. Ecological Public Health
thinking, outlined here, fits the twenty-first century's
challenges. It integrates what the authors call the four
dimensions of existence: the material, biological,
social and cultural aspects of life. Public health
becomes the task of transforming the relationship
between people, their circumstances and the biological
world of nature and bodies. For Geof Rayner and Tim
Lang, this is about facing a number of long-term
transitions, some well recognized, others not. These
transitions are Demographic, Epidemiological, Urban,
Energy, Economic, Nutrition, Biological, Cultural and
Democracy itself. The authors argue that identifying
large scale transitions such as these refocuses public
health actions onto the conditions on which human and
eco-systems health interact.Making their case, Rayner
and Lang map past confusions in public health images,
definitions and models. This is an optimistic book,
arguing public health can be rescued from its current
dilemmas and frustrations. This century's agenda is
unavoidably complex, however, and requires stronger and
more daring combinations of interdisciplinary work,
movements and professions locally, nationally and
globally. Outlining these in the concluding section, the
book charts a positive and reinvigorated institutional
purpose. |
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