What is population health? Apparently it depends on who you ask. If you ask those with a financial stake in the current health care delivery system, population health means improving the health of patients who currently use (i.e., pay for) the system. You get a different answer if you ask those involved in public health, community development, or social services. They believe “population” should include everyone in the entire geographic community, whether or not those individuals are able to use or benefit from health care services. They also believe “health” should include quality of life and economic well-being – measures that prevent disease in the first place – and not just conditions addressed by the medical model of disease.

I was initially attracted to the subject of healthism because I felt I’d been a victim of health messaging. But I was also attracted by a sense that something deeper was going on. I now see that the taken-for-granted – the questions that don’t get asked in media coverage of health issues or in the policy positions of governments — unites my blogging topics. In whose interest is neoliberalism? Medicalization? Conformity? Non-holistic medicine? The commercialization of health? Healthism? More often than not the answer is that it’s not in my interest. Nor is it in the interests of the society I want to live in. And that makes these topics personally meaningful to me.

Social determinants of health (often abbreviated SDOH) refers to unequally distributed social and economic conditions that correlate with unequal and inequitable distributions of health and disease. Presumably there is a causal relationship between the two, not merely a correlation. Definitively identifying the causal mechanisms, however, is difficult. A great many things influence our health, including things we’re not even aware of yet, and it’s difficult to isolate and scientifically study the ones we can identify.

History of Patient Modesty – Part 1: How Bodily Exposure Went from Unacceptable to Required (Patient Modesty & Privacy Concerns)
I have a guest post today on the #1 medical privacy blog. Part one describes what medicine used to be like before modern, anatomically-based theories of disease. Well into the 19th century, doctors did not expect patients to remove their clothes.

U.S. Raises Value of a Life, and Businesses Fear Impact (NYT)
How much should the government spend to prevent a single death? Environmental, consumer, and worker protection standards have been going up, despite protests from business.