Ecological Public Health

In recent decades public health has come to mean an 'old-fashioned' view of something to do with drains, engineering and the 'nanny state' using public money on infrastructure. Public health has been seen mainly as a branch of medicine, focused on preventing disease. This book demonstrates that although public health medicine is useful and honourable, a radical rethink is required and is, indeed, starting to emerge. Although ecological thinking in public health is not new, the authors argue that it has remained at the sidelines, weakly analysed and poorly theorised. Partly the reason for this is the scale and complexity of the factors ecological thinking draws into the analysis. Partly, there is an intellectual schism between natural and human ecology thinking. And partly, the deficit is due to a lack of articulate champions within governance and existing structures. Ecological Public Health requires existing different disciplines to think outside of themselves, as well as integrated thought, action and delivery. The aim of this book is to apply rigour to the concept and bring ecological thinking in public health into the mainstream. It illustrates the new approach by using examples such as obesity, alcohol abuse, water provision and HIV/AIDS, as well as challenges such as climate change and sustainable development. It will revitalize thinking about public health and set a new agenda for the next decade.

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