Yadavendu V.K. Shifting Paradigms in Public Health. From Holism to Individualism

Springer India, 2013. — 212 p. — ISBN: 978-81-322-1643-8.The world has never before been as rich as it is today. Yet, substantial populations of the world are bereft of resources to ensure a modicum of health. Nearly 1.3 billion people, overwhelmingly in the formerly colonised countries of the South, live on less than a dollar a day, and close to 1 billion cannot meet their basic calorie requirements. More than 800 million people lack access to health services, and 2.6 billion people to basic sanitation. Although people are living longer today than at any time in the past, around 1.5 billion people are not expected to survive to age 60. Indeed, life expectancy in some countries of sub-Saharan Africa is only around 40 years.
One familiar reason given for the widespread poverty and ill health in poor countries is, of course, overpopulation, which is a red herring. Despite population growth, global per capita food production increased by nearly 25 % between 1990 and 1997; the per capita daily supply of calories rose from less than 2,500–2,750, and that of proteins from 71 to 76 g. In other words, not one person in the world needed to go to bed hungry. Yet, given the fact that the overall consumption of the richest fi fth of the world’s population is 160 times that of the poorest fi fth, 840 million people, 160 million of them children, are undernourished. Close to 340 million women are not expected to survive to age 40.
The overpopulation argument also elides the fact that there occurs a net transfer of close to 80 billion dollars annually from the countries of the South to those of the North. Indeed this fi gure has increased substantially over the last three decades. During this period, marked by the demise of actually existing socialism and of Keynesianism, and the rise of the neoliberal policies of Reagan and Thatcher, inequalities within and between countries have risen sharply: the income gap between the world’s richest and poorest has more than doubled. In 1960, 20 % of the world’s population in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20 %; today, they command 74 times more. The same richest 20 % of the population command 86 % of world GDP, while the poorest 20 % command merely 1 %. More than 80 countries have per capita incomes lower than they were a decade or more ago; 55 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, have had declining per capita incomes.Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Public Health in Dilemma of Facticity Reference
Philosophical Historiography of Public Health
Origins and Orientations of Medicine and Health: A Socio-historical Overview
Medicine and Health in Mythology
Medicine and Health in the Ancient Age
Medicine and Health in the Middle Ages
Philosophical Roots of Modern Medicine
Models of Scientifi c Medicine
Concluding CommentsPhilosophical Historiography of Epidemiology
Origins of Modern Epidemiology
Epidemiologic Revolution
Shifting Paradigms of Modern Epidemiology
Risk Factor Epidemiology
Clinical Epidemiology
Molecular Epidemiology
Concluding CommentsEpidemiology, Sociology and Psychology of Health and Disease
Epidemiology of Health and Disease
Sociology of Health and Medicine
Psychology of Health and Disease
Concluding CommentsMethodological Individualism in Social Sciences
Ideas and Ideologies of Methodological Individualism in Sociology of Knowledge and Neoliberal Economics
Lessons from the Sociology of Knowledge
Methodological Individualism in Neoclassical Economics
Concluding CommentsIndividuation of Psychology
Kantian Paradigm of Psychology
The Rise of the Hegelian Paradigm
Structuralism in Psychology
Functionalism in Psychology
Associationism in Psychology
Behaviourism in Psychology
Social Psychology
Psychologising Social Psychology
Concluding CommentsStructure, Power and Theory of Health Inequalities
Polemics and Politics of Health Inequalities: A Critique
The Black Report : A Resurgence of the Debate on Health Inequalities
Explanations for Social Class Differences in Mortality
Artefact Explanations
Natural/Social Selection
Materialist/Structural Explanations
Cultural/Behavioural Explanations
Recommendations for Policy
Health Inequality as Present
Social Capital/Cohesion and Health Inequalities
Origins of Social Capital
Wilkinson’s Model of Social Cohesion/Capital
Concluding CommentsMetaphor of HIV/AIDS Policy: Images and Contexts
HIV/AIDS: A Global Epidemic
Policy on HIV/AIDS
Political Meets Methodological
Concluding CommentsEpilogue: The Past and Future of Public HealthAuthor Index
Subject Index