© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Public Health Association. All rights reserved.
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Health needs more than health care: the need for a new paradigm
David J. HunterDurham University, Durham, UK
Correspondence: e-mail: d.j.hunter@durham.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
It is a significant time for health policy in Europe. There is a growing recognition in many countries that simply pouring resources into health care services, especially those centred on acute hospital care, cannot be equated with good health. Indeed, before too long such services will become unaffordable and unsustainable in terms of their public funding from social insurance or taxation unless efforts are made to manage demand and move health policy in a different direction. The so-called diseases of comfort—the primary cause of death in the 21st century and the next—demand a different approach.1
Current approaches to tackle these diseases, with their heavy reliance on a medical model and on the ethos of markets and consumerism, are doomed to fail. A new paradigm is urgently needed, based on a holistic conception of health and on creating the conditions for health. We need to identify assets rather than deficits and
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The problem: the dominance of the medical model |
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Shifting the paradigm |
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