The Health Gap: The Challenge of an Unequal World

Description

In this groundbreaking book, Michael Marmot, president of the World Medical
Association, reveals social injustice to be the greatest threat to global
health In Baltimore’s inner-city neighborhood of Upton/Druid Heights, a man’s
life expectancy is sixty-three; not far away, in the Greater Roland
Park/Poplar neighborhood, life expectancy is eighty-three. The same twenty-
year avoidable disparity exists in the Calton and Lenzie neighborhoods of
Glasgow, and in other cities around the world. In Sierra Leone, one in 21
fifteen-year-old women will die in her fertile years of a maternal-related
cause; in Italy, the figure is one in 17,100; but in the United States, which
spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, it is one in
1,800 (and now, with the new administration chipping away at Obamacare, the
statistics stand to grow even more devastating). Why? Dramatic differences in
health are not a simple matter of rich and poor; poverty alone doesn’t drive
ill health, but inequality does. Indeed, suicide, heart disease, lung disease,
obesity, and diabetes, for example, are all linked to social disadvantage. In
every country, people at relative social disadvantage suffer health
disadvantage and shorter lives. Within countries, the higher the social status
of individuals, the better their health. These health inequalities defy the
usual explanations. Conventional approaches to improving health have
emphasized access to technical solutions and changes in the behavior of
individuals, but these methods only go so far. What really makes a difference
is creating the conditions for people to have control over their lives, to
have the power to live as they want. Empowerment is the key to reducing health
inequality and thereby improving the health of everyone. Marmot emphasizes
that the rate of illness of a society as a whole determines how well it
functions; the greater the health inequity, the greater the dysfunction.
Marmot underscores that we have the tools and resources materially to improve
levels of health for individuals and societies around the world, and that to
not do so would be a form of injustice. Citing powerful examples and startling
statistics (“young men in the U.S. have less chance of surviving to sixty than
young men in forty-nine other countries”), The Health Gap presents compelling
evidence for a radical change in the way we think about health and indeed
society, and inspires us to address the societal imbalances in power, money,
and resources that work against health equity. Read more

Features:

Product Details:

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Press; 1st edition (November 3, 2015)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1632860783
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 81
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.65 x 1.32 x 9.5 inches
• Best Sellers Rank: #309,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #108 in Health Policy (Books) #201 in Sociological Study of Medicine #277 in Sociology of Class
• #108 in Health Policy (Books)
• #201 in Sociological Study of Medicine