Activism and health in hard times

Excerpt

Historically, public health has been instrumental in bringing about radical change including reforms in sanitation in the nineteenth century and by giving people more choices to cope with the effects of HIV/AIDS in the twentieth century (Laverack 2013). Today, social injustice and health inequality are killing people on a large scale even though this could be avoided through a redistribution of power and resources from people at the top to those lower down the social gradient (Marmot et al. 2010). Of course, it would be naïve to expect this to happen without the action needed to force those holding most of the power to share what they have with others. Public health is presently engaged in a gentle debate about these issues. What we need is a strong professional statement and a revolutionary call for action to solve the problems of social injustice and health inequality. …