Globalization and Health
Ichiro Kawachi and Sarah Wamala
Abstract
Globalization is breaking down of economic, political, cultural, demographic, and social barriers across the world at an astonishing pace. The topic of globalization has caused passionate debate in many circles including academic journals, the popular media, and even on the streets. This new world order is marked by new actors, new rules of governance, new forms of communication, and the global movement of populations. Health is an exquisitely sensitive mirror of social conditions, and this book argues that the assessment of health is an important criterion for evaluating and monitoring the pr ... More
Globalization is breaking down of economic, political, cultural, demographic, and social barriers across the world at an astonishing pace. The topic of globalization has caused passionate debate in many circles including academic journals, the popular media, and even on the streets. This new world order is marked by new actors, new rules of governance, new forms of communication, and the global movement of populations. Health is an exquisitely sensitive mirror of social conditions, and this book argues that the assessment of health is an important criterion for evaluating and monitoring the progress of globalization. This book provides an analysis of the most serious global threats to health, the tools that can be used to evaluate them, and the international agencies established to respond to them. Medical threats such as infectious diseases, obesity, tobacco use, and global climate change are discussed, but the book also expands its scope to include socio-political health impacts such as economic inequality. The complex role of organizations such as the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank is also analyzed, as is the increasing interconnectedness of health and non-health actors. Is this blurring of boundaries really beneficial to the public's health, or have these actors abandoned health issues for power politics?
Keywords:
rules of governance,
communication,
social conditions,
infectious diseases,
obesity,
tobacco use,
climate change,
WHO,
IMF
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2006 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195172997 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2009 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195172997.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Ichiro Kawachi, editor
Harvard Center for Society and Health, Harvard School of Public Health
Sarah Wamala, editor
Karolinska Institute
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