Towards an ecology minded public health?

• ecology

Public health is about making people healthier but people's health greatly depends on the conditions they live in. Our environment is, to an unusually large extent, a human byproduct, shaped by social actions, regulations, economic forces, relations of power, international relations, and so on. In many cases we are not still even aware of all those interrelations, and of how actions in one place affect other areas of our ecosystem. Therefore, environmental changes tend to be regarded as “unavoidable” or as the “unforseen” consequences of profound economic and cultural changes that are being “brought on to us” without “anybody having the possibility or the ability to do anything about them”. Social wisdom seems to be about adapting to changes and incorporating them into new …