Sickness and Wealth : The Corporate Assault on Global Health

Rating:
Summary: Corporate Control, Population Health and Dis-ease
Review: Corporate Control, Population Health and Dis-ease

My hope is that Schools of Public Health, particularly the faculty and students within International Health tracks throughout "the West" (or North) will require considered examination of this exemplary contribution to Population Health in this century.

The editors and authors not only precisely capture in its introduction, conclusion and supporting chapters the substantial effects of global corporations vying for full market control of community health essentials, but offer perspectives and daily realities of people challenging and reversing those effects.

In reflecting on the "northward view" of people described throughout the book, people struggling creatively in their humaness towards health, one begins to fathom the innumberable myths their daily lives renounce; myths handed many of us throughout our formal and informal educational venues focused on individual illness and community/public health.

While pondering the various topics addressed, I'm curiously reminded of the writings of C. A. Bowers, an environmental educator. In a particular book of his, "The Culture of Denial: Why the Environmental Movement Needs a Strategy for Reforming Universities and Public Schools", c.1997, he argues for a revisioning of educational objectives, outlining why earth-based ecological centered curriculums are our ultimate (final?) opportunity for curtailing contemporary tail-spin into environmental catastrophe.

Although centered on the effects of corporate control on financially impoverished health systems in representative regions within "the South", I submit that this book offers an overall similar argument as Bowers', specifically calling for formal and informal curriculum overhauls toward real-time, wholistic understanding of essentials to health for human populations the world over.

Present day "Western" educational curriculums, continuously modeling us (with the impetus and backing of national and international corporate/state policies and programs) into promoting our consumptive, exploitive and paternalistic cultural paradigms, CAN be and MUST be challenged by efforts from community inhabitants and University post-grad faculty and students. This book exemplifies that effort by assimilating the factual experiences known and wisdoms gained first-hand throughout Earth's "South", then presenting it to we "Northerners" in compelling contextual arguments.

I look forward to more writers and educators such as these joining yet others in cultivating this fertile alluvial plane of fundamental understanding, evolving on into curriculums silted in reality-based, planet/populous health for all.

Thank you Meredith Fort, Mary Anne Mercer, and Oscar Gish for your indispensible efforts in this regard.






Rating:
Summary: What you need to know about the impacts of globalization
Review: I recently read Sickness and Wealth and found it to be a great resource in understanding the impact of contemporary globalization from a historical perspective (institutions, policies, etc.) and its damaging effect to the public's health; both domestically and internationally. I hope this book finds its way in the hands of both individuals involved in the struggle to understand and alleviate the symptoms of inequality and to those who are truly blinded by their actions.

I applaud all the authors for their work and continued efforts in their established professions. It gives me great comfort to know that there are individuals who with their accomplishments, small or large, are balancing the negativity of this world.