School of Public Health, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
J Public Health Policy. 2023 Jun;44(2):264-275. doi: 10.1057/s41271-023-00404-x. Epub 2023 Apr 3.
By recognizing the structural causes of health and illness, public health has often been associated with values of compassion and solidarity, and a relational understanding of human agency. Rather than supporting the consistent integration and application of these insights, however, public health is now sometimes invoked more as a rhetorical move, used to construct issues as simple questions of neoliberal scientistic rationalism. Public health practitioners must reckon, therefore, with how the field can be discursively deployed in the public square, for multiple divergent political ends. If public health is always positioned as a value-neutral and detached scientific approach to addressing complex subjects, from drug use to pandemics, it not only fails to connect with the arguments of its critics, but further divorces what was once called the public health 'movement' from the strong and progressive political and theoretical positions it was founded upon and should advocate for today.
通过认识到健康和疾病的结构原因，公共卫生常常与同情和团结的价值观以及对人类能动性的关系理解联系在一起。然而，公共卫生并没有始终支持这些观点的一致整合和应用，而是有时更多地被援引为一种修辞手段，用于将问题构建为新自由主义科学主义的简单问题。因此，公共卫生从业者必须考虑到该领域如何在公共广场上被用于多种不同的政治目的。如果公共卫生总是被定位为一种价值中立且超脱的科学方法，用于解决从毒品使用到流行病等复杂问题，那么它不仅未能与批评者的论点联系起来，而且进一步使曾经被称为公共卫生“运动”的东西与它所依据的强大而进步的政治和理论立场脱离开来，而它本应在今天为之倡导。
