Sridhar Venkatapuram - Health inequalities and social justice

Sridhar Venkatapuram, Senior Lecturer in Global Health and Philosophy at King’s College London, discusses ethical implications of health inequalities.

About Sridhar Venkatapuram "Sridhar Venkatapuram, Senior Lecturer in Global Health and Philosophy at King’s College London, discusses ethical implications of health inequalities."

Key Points

• Health outcomes mirror other social inequalities. In any society, the poorest and least powerful are also likely to be the least healthy. • Many people who suffer from obesity simply don’t have access to nutritious, affordable food in their neighbourhoods. • Freed of the vested interests of lobbying groups, political philosophers can start a conversation about the role of health in a good society.

How can we understand the relationship between health and social justice? The best place to begin is with our understanding that health is created and distributed in society and not only in the hospital, clinic or research laboratory.

If health is created and distributed in society, what are the ethical implications for that? A profound amount of knowledge has been produced in the field of social epidemiology, a sub-discipline of epidemiology (though some would say that all epidemiology is social). What social epidemiologists study is the causes and distribution of disease and health in people.