Global Financial Crisis An Opportunity To Improve World Health - Australian National University

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 30 Oct 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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The global financial crisis provides governments worldwide with an opportunity for course correction by putting health, equity and sustainability as the focus of government policy, according to a researcher from The Australian National University.

Dr Sharon Friel, Fellow at the ANU National Centre for Epidemiology, will tonight discuss her role as Principal Research Fellow on the World Health Organisation's Global Commission on Social Determinants on Health. The Commission challenged governments worldwide to close the health gap in a generation. Dr Friel will argue that the Australian Government's intervention in the financial crisis has created policy space in which to position health equity and sustainability as central policy goals.

"The toxic combination of poor social policies, unfair economic arrangements and bad politics is, in large measure, responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible - social injustice is killing people on a grand scale," said Dr Friel.

"The poor health of the poor, the social gradient of health within countries and the marked health inequities between countries are caused by the unequal distribution of power and income. The consequent unfairness peoples' lives - their access to health care, schools and education, their conditions of work and leisure, their homes, communities, towns or cities - and their chances of leading a flourishing life. Together these constitute the social determinants of health.

"Departments of health at federal and state level and international health organisations have a moral responsibility to champion a social determinants of health approach. But neither can they, nor should they be solely responsible. Health may not be the aim of all social policies but it will be a fundamental result."

She added that the underlying determinants of health inequity and of environmental change overlap substantially: "They reflect, in particular, an economic system predicated on growth and competition, shaped by market forces that mostly disregard health and environmental consequences and limits rather than by values of fairness and support," she said.

WHAT: Dr Sharon Friel public lecture - Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity Through Action on the Social Determinants of Health

WHEN: Thursday 30 October, 5.30pm - 6.30pm

WHERE: Innovations Lecture Theatre, Innovations Building, Eggleston Road

Source
Martyn Pearce
Media Officer
Communications and External Liaison Office
Office of the Vice-Chancellor
The Australian National University