Building a healthier world as a matter of social duty.
Recently, I have been writing some reflections that are spurred by the moment, focusing on how we need to make health a priority in our politics, and on my concerns about ensuring our politics are informed by an appreciation of their effect on people’s lives and health. Today, I want to reflect on perhaps some of the genesis of the current actions we are seeing at the federal level, actions with deep implications for national and global health. As the new US federal administration has begun making sweeping cuts to federal programs, one cannot help but feel that these programs are being cut, in part, because they are seen as being “charitable” and that charity, when times are tough, or when ideology shifts, is no longer regarded as a tenable motivation for large-scale federal expenditure. This matters for public health because much of what we do can indeed be interpretated as, at core, charitable in intent, with all the baggage this can carry in the national political debate.
Read more here