Everything is supposedly a 'public health' issue in the US, but this buzzword does little to address real challenges.
public health method is more prevalent than epidemiology, which uses shoe-leather data collection and statistics to analyze the incidence and distribution of disease between populations. Epidemiology can be an incredibly powerful tool; it’s what experts used to identifyin the United States. However, it also reveals the downsides of a public health approach that sees itself as all science, no politics.
The epidemiological approach is too often “characterized by a focus on factors considered in isolation from their context,”. He noticed that his colleagues often focused on identifying a handful of discrete “risk factors” that could be manipulated to improve health. But Wing argued that this logic often had terrible consequences.
The problem is not that public health officials want to turn their field to studying individual health. Rather, it’s that public health officials do not hold the purse strings and, even when they do wield some power over their communities, somefor fear of backlash. As a result, our response to collective crises has become narrowly focused on what can be done, with little attention to what should be done.
This was once true in the United States as well, says Richard Hofrichter, the former senior director of health equity for the National Association of County and City Health Officials. In the early 20th century, the country witnessed a dramatic leap in life expectancies.
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