The Perils of Medicalization for Population Health and Health Equity
Possiblement el que cal és començar pel principi. Per afrontar la medicalització hem de saber de què estem parlant. Aquest article ajuda en primer lloc a això, i diu:
medicalization—the process by which personal, behavioral, and social issues are increasingly viewed through a biomedical lens and “diagnosed and treated” as individual pathologies and problems
I després posa els exemples i les estratègies:
First, medicalization and its negative aspects need to be better recognized and resisted. There are many audiences in need of a deeper understanding and appreciation of the dangers of the current overly medicalized view of population and public health and the conflation of health with health care. This includes physicians and other types of clinicians, along with health care administrators, executives, and analysts.
Second, because of the strong focus on individuals and personal responsibility in United States culture, it is critical to expand the capacity for the media to tell different types of stories. Journalists frequently draw from individual anecdotes and thus may require training or resources to effectively tell structural stories in compelling ways. A number of important efforts in this regard are underway
Third, more health-related research funding is needed across a variety of domains to move beyond medicalized perspectives in research and policy recommendations. A host of behavioral and social science research at the micro, meso, and macro levels needs to be elevated in order to better understand and address the core issues that cut across health status outcomes
Fourth, public policy narratives and priorities for health need to be changed. The conflation of health policy and health care policy must be halted, along with a de-emphasis on health care policy as the main route to improved population health
i conclou:
A medicalized view of health ignores the limited role that personal health care services and health insurance play in producing levels and distributions of health within communities and populations.Medicalization also has far-reaching negative effects on cultural and media representations of health and illness; on the allocations of funding for research, interventions, and public health infrastructure; and on agenda setting for the social policy reforms needed to address the fundamental drivers of social and health inequity
En qualsevol cas sorprèn que no faci referència al consumisme sanitari ni als determinants comercials de la salut. Hi ha més coses a fer, calen més estratègies que les que diu l'article. En parlarem un altre dia.
Parov Stelar
