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Public Health Preparedness: Social Control or Social Justice?
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Public Health Preparedness: Social Control or Social Justice?

Steve Wing and Leah Schinasi
The South Atlantic quarterly, v 106(4), pp 789-804
01 Oct 2007

Abstract

Business Disasters Emergency preparedness Environmental impact Ethics Health hazards Human exposure Public health Social services Space Verbal aggression
Public health preparedness refers to a society's readiness to respond to sudden threats to the health of the population at large. Some threats come from planned attacks and other threats are natural disasters, and could disrupt public services and cause mass casualties. Even if it is known that such events will eventually occur, their timing, location, and severity are unpredictable. Preparation for reducing the impact of large-scale disasters must take into account social welfare, economic inequalities, national security, and public safety. Wing and Schinasi present evidence showing that such preparations are shaped more by disease-oriented institutions of social control than by health-oriented institutions of social justice. They offer suggestions for how to make public health preparedness more ethical and effective through an orientation based in grassroots democracy that stresses the integration of professional services with health-promoting policies in agriculture, labor, transportation, energy, commerce, and foreign affairs. They begin by considering how health is defined.

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Web of Science research areas
Cultural Studies
Literary Reviews
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