Overview
Addresses paradigmatic shifts in public health discourse from the ancient to the modern world, with a focus on epidemiology
Draws on perspectives from the social sciences, medicine, and history
Discusses the shift in public health discourses from a population focus to methodological individualism, with adverse consequences for the population
Argues for a rights-based perspective to bring social justice and fairness within public health policy
Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
Table of contents (9 chapters)
-
Front Matter
-
Philosophical Historiography of Public Health
-
Front Matter
-
-
Methodological Individualism in Social Sciences
-
Front Matter
-
-
Structure, Power and Theory of Health Inequalities
-
Front Matter
-
-
Back Matter
Keywords
- Class differences in mortality
- Dominant paradigms in public health
- Holistic perspectives in epidemiology
- Individualism in AIDS policy
- Individualism in psychology
- Individualism in sociology of knowledge
- Medical sociology and health
- Medicine and health in mythology
- Methodological individualism in public health
- Origins of modern epidemiology
- Philosophical origins of public health
- Philosophical roots of modern medicine
- Psychology and health
- Rights and justice in public health
- Social capital and health inequalities
- The Black Report on health inequality
About this book
This transdisciplinary volume outlines the development of public health paradigms across the ages in a global context and argues that public health has seemingly lost its raison d’être, that is, a population perspective. The older, philosophical approach in public health involved a holistic, population-based understanding that emphasized historicity and interrelatedness to study health and disease in their larger socio-economic and political moorings. A newer tradition, which developed in the late 19th century following the acceptance of the germ theory in medicine, created positivist transitions in epidemiology. In the form of risk factors, a reductionist model of health and disease became pervasive in clinical and molecular epidemiology.
The author shows how positivism and the concept of individualism removed from public health thinking the consideration of historical, social and economic influences that shape disease occurrence and the interventions chosen for a population. He states that the neglect of the multifactorial approach in contemporary public health thought has led to growing health inequalities in both the developed and the developing world. He further suggests that the concept of ‘social capital’ in public health, which is being hailed as a resurgence of holism, is in reality a sophisticated and extended version of individualism.
The author presents the negative public policy consequences and implications of adopting methodological individualism through a discussion on AIDS policies. The book strongly argues for a holistic understanding and the incorporation of a rights perspective in public health to bring elements of social justice and fairness in policy formulations.Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Shifting Paradigms in Public Health
Book Subtitle: From Holism to Individualism
Authors: Vijay Kumar Yadavendu
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1644-5
Publisher: Springer New Delhi
eBook Packages: Medicine, Medicine (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer India 2013
Hardcover ISBN: 978-81-322-1643-8Published: 19 December 2013
Softcover ISBN: 978-81-322-2929-2Published: 17 September 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-81-322-1644-5Published: 09 December 2013
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 203
Topics: Public Health, Biomedicine general, Philosophy of Medicine, Popular Science in Medicine and Health