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1 Claire Edwards and Eluska Fernández Analysing health and health policy: introducing the governmentality turn Introduction Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning international literature which seeks to analyse the construction of health and health policy through an analytical lens drawn from post-Foucauldian ideas of governmentality (Petersen and Lupton, 1996; Lupton, 1995, 2003; Joyce, 2001; Petersen and Bunton, 1997; Lovell, Kearns and Prince, 2014; Ferlie, McGivern and FitzGerald, 2012). From analyses of constructions of welfare citizens and patients
Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning international literature which seeks to analyse the construction of health and health policy through an analytical lens drawn from post-Foucauldian ideas of governmentality. This book is the first to apply the theoretical lens of post-Foucauldian governmentality to an analysis of health problems, practices, and policy in Ireland. Drawing on empirical examples related to childhood, obesity, mental health, smoking, ageing and others, it explores how specific health issues have been constructed as problematic and in need of intervention in the Irish State. The book focuses specifically on how Jean Jacques Rousseau's critical social theory and normative political theory meet as a conception of childhood. The 'biosocial' apparatus has recently been reconfigured through a policy framework called Healthy Ireland, the purpose of which is to 'reduce health inequalities' by 'empowering people and communities'. Child fatness continues to be framed as a pervasive and urgent issue in Irish society. In a novel departure in Irish public health promotion, the Stop the Spread (STS) campaign, free measuring tapes were distributed throughout Ireland to encourage people to measure their waists. A number of key characteristics of neoliberal governmentality, including the shift towards a market-based model of health; the distribution of power across a range of agents and agencies; and the increasing individualisation of health are discussed. One of the defining features of the Irish health system is the Universal Health Insurance and the Disability Act 2005.
8 Joanne Wilson and Lindsay Prior Neoliberal governmentality and public health policy in Ireland Introduction Since 1994 the Irish government has developed policies that set out its vision, priorities and direction for improving and sustaining the health of its people. This chapter critically appraises how these strategies have been configured to structure responsibility for health. Informed by the work of Rose and colleagues (Rose, 1999, 2000; Rose and Miller, 2010; Rose, O’Malley and Valverde, 2006), our analysis exposes a number of key characteristics of
properly trained staff and fully integrated into health and social care systems across the life-course. Community-based rehabilitative approaches must be developed and/or expanded, and the number of qualified service personnel increased. Stigma must be combated. MHPSS must be coordinated, integrated, accountable and culturally appropriate, engaging with the community, including vulnerable groups. Sufficient political will is recognised as essential. National mental health policies
evidence-based public health policies. Data systems with adequate demographic information about residents must be linked to broader epidemiological surveillance systems to quickly identify and respond to future outbreaks. Also, given the vulnerability of care home residents, these structures should be prioritised for the allocation of human and financial resources, as well as key commodities for IPC, such as PPE. Standard policies and guidelines for
behaviours that failed to control the epidemic. In the absence of biomedical tools, public health policies called for behaviour changes; these required a lot of discipline and gave an unreliable result. 8 UNAIDS (2015), ‘Understanding Fast-Track: Accelerating Action to End the Aids Epidemic by 2030’ (Geneva: UNAIDS), www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/201506_JC2743_Understanding
in Malawi was launched in 2018 with the ambition to reduce the gap with rich countries. In Western countries, cervical cancer has become a rare disease with a reasonably good prognostic. It is not the case of Malawi, where incidence rates of cervical cancers are among the highest in the world and where cervical cancer is synonymous with a long, painful and lonely death. Oncology is a field in which MSF has little experience and which is globally neglected by national and global health policies
that make the best use of these products and incorporate both new knowledge about the disease and a better comprehension of the social and political circumstances in the places where Ebola epidemics occur. To not grasp this opportunity would be a failure. But to elaborate any new public health policy, the national and international authorities that will oversee future Ebola responses must also be convinced. It is not yet certain how Ebola activities in the DRC will be run
these services in fact do not ‘essentially fall within UNRWA health policy mandate’. In the case of ‘normal deliveries’, this service had been funded through additional support provided from the Qatari Red Crescent and UNICEF from 2011 to March 2018, with the start of this service clearly coinciding with the onset of the mass displacement of refugees from Syria to Lebanon and the acknowledgment of the particular vulnerabilities that all Palestinians in Lebanon would be facing as a result. In turn, the copayment service had been introduced
As the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s recedes from popular memory,
researchers are once again beginning to engage with the subject from historical
perspectives. This collection brings together some of the exciting new work
emerging from this resurgence, addressing essential but much less well-known
histories of HIV/AIDS.
Focusing on regions of Western Europe, Histories of
HIV/AIDS introduces aspects of the epidemic from places including Scotland,
Wales, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Switzerland, and draws
attention to the experiences and activities of often-overlooked people: sex
workers, drug users, mothers, nurses, social workers, and those living and
working in prisons. It also examines the challenges, opportunities, and risks at
the heart of how we archive and remember this epidemic. Highlighting the
importance of understanding local and national contexts, transnational
interactions, and heterogeneous forms of policy, activism, and expertise, it
encourages attention to the complexity of these histories and their ongoing
importance today.
Of particular interest to historians of modern Europe and
health, area studies specialists, and those working with archives and museums,
this book is an essential addition to HIV/AIDS studies and histories.