Political Science In, Of, and With Public Health

Fafard, Patrick; Cassola, Adèle; Weldon, Isaac

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-98985-9_2

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…There is an important ethical dimension underpinning these influences 4 . Scholars in global health, in their search for justice and equity, have understood the need to adopt the systematic study of politics and harness the methods and insights of political science 5 . The field of medical education draws on a range of social sciences, but our understanding of global medical education can be more incisive if additionally viewed through a political lens.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power and place: Uncovering the politics of global medical education

Rashid,

Grant

2024

Medical Education

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ContextPolitics is characterised by power relations, and the deployment of power is inescapably political. In an increasingly globalised and interconnected modern world, politics is shaping the field of medical education more than ever before. Global frameworks that classify peoples and places are political tools that are fundamentally shaped by hegemonic knowledge systems. Despite this, they continue to form the basis for global thinking and practices, including in medical education. Political analysis can help to expose and challenge such thinking.ApproachTo better understand impacts of globalisation in medical education, we explore the previously under‐examined political dimensions that underpin it, focusing particularly on deconstructing power relations. We situate our analysis of global medical education in political terms, including through examination of ideology, economics, market and the enduring effects of colonialism. We interrogate the construct of the Global South (GS), considering the geopolitical and historical ideas that have enabled it to be widely propagated. We go on to examine the consequences of the GS construct in medical education and consider what this tells us about how power is enacted in the field.ConclusionsIn analysing the politics of global medical education, we shed light on how power is exerted and draw attention to forces that permit and enable trends, policies and positions. Notwithstanding the emancipatory rhetoric that has been associated with the GS construct, we highlight its reductive potential and argue that it can lead to an oversimplification of power relations and vested interests. Given the growing recognition that educational approaches do not transfer well across countries and cultures, we encourage the medical education community to consider why ideas from more dominant countries continue to be imitated so routinely. In doing so, we urge them to use political lenses to recognise the influence of multiple complex and interconnected forces of global power that shape all aspects of medical education.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power and place: Uncovering the politics of global medical education

Rashid,

Grant

2024

Medical Education

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“…In doing so, we believe we are demonstrating what, in practice, a political science with public health might look like. As discussed in Chapter 2 (Fafard et al, 2022), this involves a critical and conceptually sophisticated perspective that interrogates the inherent assumptions of public health practice while remaining sympathetic to the broader public health project.…”

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confidence: 99%

Moving Beyond Health in All Policies: Exploring How Policy Could Front and Centre the Reduction of Social Inequities in Health

Holt

Frohlich

2022

Integrating Science and Politics for Public Health

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In recent years there has been a proliferation of concepts to describe intersectoral health policies. Much of this work orients around the promise of Health in All Policies (HiAP), an intersectoral approach that promotes addressing the social determinants of health (SDH) and social inequities in health. However, in practice, questions of health equity are often marginal or unattainable. Based on a conceptual critique of HiAP, we explore some of the problems involved when trying to effectively design and implement policies with the explicit goal of reducing social inequities in health. We find that the intersectoral approaches to policymaking and implementation of health equity policies should be seen as distinct from Health in All Policies. Using the example of intersectoral health policies seeking to reduce smoking, we argue that they have been relatively ineffective at reducing social inequities in smoking. We suggest that the capability approach (CA) could provide the basis of a policy framework for guiding more effective intersectoral policy action to reduce social inequities in health.

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Introduction: Virchow Revisited on the Importance of Public Health Political Science

Fafard

Leeuw

Cassola

2022

Integrating Science and Politics for Public Health

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The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that the choices governments make to address infectious disease threats are necessarily and inherently informed by both scientific evidence and a host of other social, ethical, and economic considerations. Managing what are often competing goals is the stuff of politics. Because public health is political, it only makes sense to draw on the insights of political science, a discipline that seeks to systematically understand how politics and government work. However, what some have called public health political science is a relatively underdeveloped area, in part because of structural barriers that keep these two disciplines from engaging meaningfully. Thus, the major goals of this book are to provide examples of how political science perspectives can be used to better inform public health; to call on political scientists to learn from and engage in public health; and to advance the interconnection of public health and political science as scholarly disciplines. This chapter briefly explores the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of this emergent field and provides a summary sketch of the individual chapters.

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Political Science In, Of, and With Public Health

Cited by 5 publications

References 41 publications

Power and place: Uncovering the politics of global medical education

Power and place: Uncovering the politics of global medical education

Moving Beyond Health in All Policies: Exploring How Policy Could Front and Centre the Reduction of Social Inequities in Health

Introduction: Virchow Revisited on the Importance of Public Health Political Science

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