Public Policies and Health

Andrain, Charles F.

doi:10.1057/9780230376878_8

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 131 publications

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“…Health promotion interventions are generally either designed as broad interventions targeting the general population with the aim of changing the distribution of ill health across the social gradient or they are designed to promote health equality through targeted interventions in selected population groups (Marmot, 2015; Pons-Vigués et al, 2014). Public health research addressing this issue tends to adopt an instrumentalist approach (Andrain, 1998), which is based on predefined categories of health and seeks to identify the most effective strategies for addressing health inequalities in particular population groups defined by gender, age, socioeconomic characteristics, geographical areas, etc. (Bonevski et al, 2014; Pons-Vigués et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Access to intervene. An ethnographic study of public health practices targeting health inequalities

Høybye

Holt²,

Rod

2021

Health (London)

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Much public health research has devoted attention to the question of how interventions aimed at reducing health inequalities can access so-called “hard-to-reach” populations. This work has generally reflected an instrumentalist approach, which implies the preexistence of particular target groups characterized by specific public health problems. The key research interests are to find ways to effectively alleviate health inequalities and to identify the best ways to intervene to address disparate health problems among certain groups of people. Based on ethnographic research with public health officers in four Danish municipalities, this article turns the issue on its head by examining how public health officers gain access to intervene in practice and, as part of this process, define and delineate target groups and public health problems. Through detailed descriptions of two ethnographic cases, we develop the argument that public health interventions carry with them moral differentiations that may contradict the overall intention of reducing health inequalities. We adopt a theoretical perspective developed by Lakoff and Collier, suggesting that public health interventions can be understood as “regimes of living.” This leads us to the conclusion that the practices of gaining access result in the production of unforeseen target groups and new moral configurations where the value of health becomes linked to other types of value, most importantly economic value. For public health officers, the complicated issue of gaining access to intervene is not simply a matter of finding practical solutions; it also defines and delineates the scope of public health itself.

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