Health Justice (ePub)

Social factors have a powerful influence on human health and
longevity. Yet the social dimensions of health are often obscured
in public discussions due to the overwhelming focus in health
policy on medical care, individual-level risk factor research, and
changing individual behaviours. Likewise, in philosophical
approaches to health and social justice, the debates have largely
focused on rationing problems in health care and on personal
responsibility. However, a range of events over the past two
decades such as the study of modern famines, the global experience
of HIV/AIDS, the international women's health movement, and
the flourishing of social epidemiological research have drawn
attention to the robust relationship between health and broad
social arrangements.

In Health Justice, Sridhar Venkatapuram takes up the problem
of identifying what claims individuals have in regard to their
health in modern societies and the globalized world. Recognizing
the social bases of health and longevity, Venkatapuram extends the
'Capabilities Approach' of Amartya Sen and Martha
Nussbaum into the domain of health and health sciences. In so
doing, he formulates an inter-disciplinary argument that draws on
the natural and social sciences as well as debates around social
justice to argue for every human being's moral entitlement to
a capability to be healthy.

An ambitious integration of the health sciences and the
Capabilities Approach, Health Justice aims to provide a
concrete ethical grounding for the human right to health, while
advancing the field of health policy and placing health at the
centre of social justice theory.

With a foreword by Sir Michael Marmot, chair of the WHO
Commission on the Social Determinants of Health.