Public Health and the "Medical Problem"

• In Event: 50462 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 11: Boundary Work

Abstract

Existing analyses of medicalization in public health rely heavily on public health and medicine being different. In other words, they rely on public health not already being a medicalizing apparatus. (e.g., Lantz et al., 2023) This proposed conceptual paper argues that public health is inherently a medicalizing/ed apparatus and posits that the depiction of public health as being invaded by medicalization, rather than already facilitating this social process at its foundation, is partly a reflection of murky conceptions of what a “medical problem” is. Therefore, through engagement and analysis of conceptual literature, this paper presents a novel redefinition for the medical problem as being "an identified threat to health." Understanding public health and clinical medicine as operating from the same problem definitions is necessary for the identification of medicalization's consequences beyond the conflation of "'health' and 'healthcare'" and individualizing interventions.

Author

• Marquisele Mercedes, Brown University