http://www.crich.ca/isuhconference2005/pWorkshop.asp

The 4th International Conference on Urban Health

7. The Politics of the Social Determinants of Health

Facilitators: Dennis Raphael, PhD and Toba Bryant, PhD
Affiliations: School of Health Policy and Management, York University and
Centre for Research on Inner City Health, St. Michael’s Hospital
Time: 12:00 noon – 4:00 pm
Location: TBA

Despite the increasing recognition of the importance of the social
determinants of health and public policies that strengthen these
determinants of health by academic researchers, civil society
organizations, and the World Health Organization, potent barriers exist
that make implementation of such an agenda difficult. These barriers
include competing paradigms of health that emphasize biomedical and
behavioural approaches to health, ideological commitments by governments to
neo-liberal or market-oriented approaches to health care and social service
provision, and powerful economic and social forces that oppose equity-based
approaches to promoting health and well-being through the development of
health public policy. This pre-conference workshop identifies some of these
forces, shows how they influence government receptivity to social
determinants of health concepts, and identifies means of transcending these
barriers to implement a social determinants of health agenda.