Social Policy as Health Policy
- Steven H. Woolf, MD, MPH
- Author Affiliations: Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Human Needs, Richmond.
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
What health professionals might call social issues—eg, the economy, jobs, education—now dominate the national agenda. Families, businesses, and government are confronting a recession, unstable financial markets, unemployment, a housing crisis, environmental challenges, and other global threats. Sweeping corrective measures are under way to restore economic stability, maintain public services, and promote student and workforce education. Rarely, however, do proponents of these efforts note their connection to health, a nexus that is rarely their first concern or within their expertise.
The health professions, for their part, deal little with social policy, focusing instead on health care issues, for understandable reasons. Health care spending in the United States now exceeds $2 trillion per year,1 surpassing the health care spending of any other country but producing inferior results.2 Reforming health care to control costs and improve access and quality is the priority of health policy makers. This focus on health care …
