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Warning: America is Obesinogenic
Jun. 5th, 2008 11:46 amYesterday I unexpectedly found myself at a talk by the social epidemiologist Ichiro Kawachi on the social determinants of health. He's giving a talk at UWA tonight, it may be too late for people to go though. Audio available from here (thanks Zanchey!)
It was absolutely fascinating. Here are some somewhat unstructed thoughts based on the notes I took (on my pda, I certainly didn't go in expecting to take notes) and the printout of his slides.
Basically, the idea is that if we want to lower the prevalence of some illness we need to look at (and fix) the environmental factors driving the overall trend towards it, not focus on telling individuals how to "stop making themselves sick". He looked specifically at why England is healthier than America despite the fact that americans spend way more on healthcare (and tend to drink and smoke less), and within that at what's causing the "obesity epidemic". It was pretty much exactly the thing I was looking for the reconcile the somewhat contradictory ideas that (a) There's an obesity epidemic and (b) there's not that much individuals can do to change their weight (so how are we all getting fatter?) It also very much suits my pinko socialist tendencies :)
( Read more... )
It was absolutely fascinating. Here are some somewhat unstructed thoughts based on the notes I took (on my pda, I certainly didn't go in expecting to take notes) and the printout of his slides.
Basically, the idea is that if we want to lower the prevalence of some illness we need to look at (and fix) the environmental factors driving the overall trend towards it, not focus on telling individuals how to "stop making themselves sick". He looked specifically at why England is healthier than America despite the fact that americans spend way more on healthcare (and tend to drink and smoke less), and within that at what's causing the "obesity epidemic". It was pretty much exactly the thing I was looking for the reconcile the somewhat contradictory ideas that (a) There's an obesity epidemic and (b) there's not that much individuals can do to change their weight (so how are we all getting fatter?) It also very much suits my pinko socialist tendencies :)
( Read more... )
