Hurricane Katrina Showed Link Between Social Inequality And Health

Main Category: Aid / Disasters
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 27 Oct 2006 - 23:00 PDT

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Who lived or died in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was "more a reflection of available housing and transportation options, not biologic risk factors," say a group of social medicine scholars in their essay on why social medicine still matters.

Although nature triggers environmental disasters, say Timothy Holtz (Emory University), Leon Eisenberg (Harvard University), Scott Stonington (UCSF) and Seth Holmes (UCSF), there is nothing "natural"about the way in which certain people are more likely to die. "All disasters are shaped by the context and hierarchy of human social organization," they say.

The authors argue that the link between social inequality and ill health is seen in nearly every field of medicine and public health, not just in disaster situations, but in the stark ethnic differences in health and in the way in which patients who need the most health care often receive the least (the "inverse care law").

"If we want to fulfill our role as medical professionals," say Holtz and colleagues, "we cannot confine our alleviation of suffering to patient biology. Our bedside manner should be extended to an informed 'community-side manner' that considers all the social contributing factors to human health."

Citation: Holtz TH, Holmes S, Stonington S, Eisenberg L (2006) Health is still social: Contemporary examples in the age of the genome. PLoS Med 3(10): e419.

PLEASE ADD THE LINK TO THE PUBLISHED ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030419

CONTACT:

Leon Eisenberg
Harvard Medical School
Social Medicine
641 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115-6019 United States of America

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Social medicine in the 21st century

Contact: Andrew Hyde
Public Library of Science

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