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Just Global Health?
Author(s) -
ReidHenry Simon
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
development and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-7660
pISSN - 0012-155X
DOI - 10.1111/dech.12245
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , economic justice , politics , mainstream , sociology , public health , global justice , law and economics , typology , inequality , global health , social science , environmental ethics , political science , law , health care , medicine , nursing , mathematical analysis , philosophy , mathematics , anthropology
Some 40 years ago, the public health philosopher Dan Beauchamp suggested that ‘public health should be a way of doing justice’. The argument put forward in this essay is that global health should be a way of doing global justice, by ameliorating the health inequalities that exclude many millions of people globally from enjoying a healthy life and from the benefits of a fuller inclusion in modern society. The essay develops this argument in three stages. First, it sets out some points of intersection between the politics of (global) health and competing ideas of justice. It offers a very basic typology of global health policy and practice that divides it into ‘market‐justice’ and ‘social‐justice’ models, and shows why it is the market‐justice model that at present dominates. Second, the essay explores how mainstream ‘market‐justice’ approaches to global health deal with the problem of health inequality rather weakly, and it is suggested that there are both historical and geographical reasons for this. Third, three ‘social‐justice’ approaches to global health are explored that better take those historical and geographical conditions into account. In conclusion the essay offers some thoughts on the political uses of theories of justice.