Sustainability in public health

Extract

This Spectrum discusses the meaning of sustainability in public health. What would it imply – conceptually and practically - that we aim to develop public health programmes that do not just contribute to short term successes, but also to successful public health for the next generations? Horstman and Toet argue that an individualistic framing of prevention of infectious diseases is a risk for sustainable prevention and that it is necessary to investigate how the notions of a ‘collective fate’ and ‘interdependency’ can become articulated in vaccination programmes. Huijer argues that current insights in the sociology of time can be fruitfully used to investigate the relation between past, present and future in public health and to learn how to fruitfully balance living in ‘the here and now’ and a sustainable public health. Slatman argues that to develop a concept of sustainable life style change the idea of ‘the healthy choice’ is counterproductive, as ‘choosing’ is an act that nowadays particularly expresses the volatile instead of the sustainable. She argues that for developing sustainable life style change the concept of identity, which by definition is the ‘I’ that is beyond choice, is much more promising than the concept of choice. Verweij focuses on the problem of antibiotics resistance as a major risk for prevention of infectious diseases. He argues that reduction of antibiotics use is an issue of international equity and justice. He proposes to develop a model for an internationally fair distribution of antibiotics rights and he makes clear that to deal with this kind of agreements public health can not but interfere with the domain of agricultural policy, as Western agriculture is a major user of antibiotics. Finally Bal discusses the gaps between public health science, policy and practice as a risk for sustainable public health. He diagnoses these gaps as an effect of the different cultures of accountability and he argues that free experimental spaces are needed to explore how these gaps can be overcome and how sustainable knowledge production in public health can be enabled. …