Promoting Healthy Behavior: How Much Freedom? Whose Responsibility?Daniel Callahan Georgetown University Press, 04/02/2000 - 192 من الصفحات The government, the media, HMOs, and individual Americans have all embraced programs to promote disease prevention. Yet obesity is up, exercise is down, teenagers continue to smoke, and sexually transmitted disease is rampant. Why? These intriguing essays examine the ethical and social problems that create subtle obstacles to changing Americans' unhealthy behavior. The contributors raise profound questions about the role of the state or employers in trying to change health-related behavior, about the actual health and economic benefits of even trying, and about the freedom and responsibility of those of us who, as citizens, will be the target of such efforts. They ask, for instance, whether we are all equally free to live healthy lives or whether social and economic conditions make a difference. Do disease prevention programs actually save money, as is commonly argued? What is the moral legitimacy of using economic and other incentives to change people's behavior, especially when (as with HMOs) the goal is to control costs? One key issue explored throughout the book is the fundamental ambivalence of traditionally libertarian Americans about health promotion programs: we like the idea of good health, but we do not want government or others posing threats to our personal lifestyle choices. The contributors argue that such programs will continue to prove less than wholly successful without a fuller examination of their place in our national values. |
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... illness . Whereas " role responsibility " in this schema may imply nothing more than one's " role " as a biological organism , “ causal responsibility " implicates the individual's choices and actions with regard to diet and exercise ...
... illnesses and premature death are caused by human habits of living that people choose for themselves " ( emphasis added ) . Ironically , this traditional approach to health promotion has tended to be disease oriented rather than health ...
... illness and disease . " 18 In a now - classic series of studies , for example , Lester Breslow and his associates revealed that men who followed seven personal health habits - eating breakfast , drinking only in moderation , not smok ...
... illness and premature death . 45 Mary Haan and her colleagues , for example , demon- strated in their study in Alameda County , California , that residence in a poverty neighborhood resulted in a 40 percent excess mortality rate ...
... illnesses . And only with the advent of a movement for environ- mental justice have we begun to appreciate the health consequences of such inequities as the fact that people of color have incinerators placed in their neighborhoods at a ...
المحتوى
23 | |
HELEN HALPIN SCHAUFFLER | 37 |
E HAAVI MORREIM | 56 |
ANN ROBERTSON | 76 |
RONALD LABONTE | 95 |
Finding | 137 |
MEREDITH MINKLER | 153 |
Contributors | 171 |