What isn't public health?

Area of Science:

• Social and Political Sciences
• Public Health Policy

Background:

• Public health traditionally emphasizes structural determinants of health, compassion, and solidarity.
• A shift is observed where public health is increasingly used rhetorically, framed within neoliberal scientistic rationalism.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze how public health is discursively deployed in the public square for divergent political ends.
• To examine the consequences of positioning public health as a value-neutral scientific approach.

Main Methods:

• Discourse analysis of public health rhetoric.
• Critical examination of the field's theoretical and political positioning.

Main Results:

• Public health discourse is sometimes co-opted for neoliberal agendas, simplifying complex issues.
• Framing public health as value-neutral hinders connection with critics and erodes its progressive movement foundations.

Conclusions:

• Public health practitioners must actively engage with the political and rhetorical dimensions of the field.
• Reclaiming the 'public health movement' requires advocating for its foundational progressive political and theoretical stances.