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Ecology and Public Health by Roderick John Lawrence

Course video 9 of 47

This module will introduce the concept of global health. Global health is a relatively new field and there is currently some debate over its definition.

This course proposes an overview of current global health challenges drawing on the insights of several academic disciplines including medicine, public health, law, economics, social sciences and humanities. This interdisciplinary approach will guide the student into seven critical topics in global health.

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教學方

Rafael Ruiz De Castañeda
Institute of Global Health - Faculty of Medicine
Antoine Flahault
Professor of Public Health and Director of the Institute of Global Health (Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva) and co-Director of Centre Virchow-Villermé (Université Paris Descartes)

腳本

[MUSIC]

Welcome to this presentation on Ecology and public health.

The outline of my presentation will be, what is ecology,

general ecology, and human ecology?

Because it's important to clarify the meaning of these terms.

Then I'll explain why the biomedical model is necessary but

insufficient to deal with global health challenges.

In that respect, an interdisciplinary approach is necessary.

An interdisciplinary approach can be founded on

the broader principles of human ecology, and

I will show how human ecology can be applied

using knowledge arenas at the local level.

The pedagogical objectives of this presentation are understanding

the meaning of an ecological approach and how it can be applied.

Second, understand the relevance of interdisciplinary and

intersectoral contributions.

And third, consider the pertinence of human ecology as a framework for

dealing with global health challenges.

Let us begin with the meaning of this term ecology.

Ecology is a word a la mode, and it has been interpreted in very different ways.

But what is important to understand is it is derived from the ancient Greek roots,

oikos and logos, and it means the science of the habitat.

So we're talking about a scientific mode of inquiry.

It's also interesting to note that economy is derived from oikos and

nomos, and this refers to the management of the habitat.

So on the one hand, we require knowledge to understand the living and

working conditions in which we spend our lives.

And on the other hand, we need to understand how to manage

these living and working conditions for our health and quality of life.

In that respect, it's extremely important to make the distinction

between the construction of knowledge for management of the habitat.

And political ecology, which is not a scientific approach,

but an agenda that is related to environmental conservation and protection.

Based on this clarification, the first definition of ecology,

derived from the natural scientists, was provided by The German zoologist Haeckel,

when he stated in 1866 that ecology can be defined as

the science studying the conditions of existence of living organisms and

the interactions of all kinds existing between them and their environment.

This is an extremely important definition because it

is grounded in understanding living conditions

in terms of real world conditions rather than laboratory experimentation.

And we can therefore derive the ecological perspective by

this grounded knowledge on living conditions in the world.

Now this definition of ecology was first used to interpret

the living conditions of animals and plants.

And the point then becomes,

how can we by analogy extend this interpretation to address Homo sapiens?

Human Ecology is derived from the definition of ecology provided

by Haeckel at the end of the 19th century.

But it was not first used until the 1920s when

a certain group of scientists and researchers decided to explore

the relationships between people and their living and working conditions.

In this respect, it's important to understand that Human Ecology goes

beyond the biotic and abiotic dimensions of general ecology,

as defined by a zoologist like Haeckel, to include cultural and

social dimensions of human populations.

It's extremely important to focus on the social and cultural dimensions,

which vary from society to society, and indeed over time.

Cultural dimensions include fundamental values, indeed, nonmonetary values,

including worldviews, and religious beliefs and spirituality.

Social organization is also an important component of human societies.

And here we talk about rules, norms and standards, legislation.

We also talk about the use of infrastructure and services

that are created by societies to deal with these living and working conditions.

And Human Ecology began at this time in

the 1920s in Chicago in order to understand

this unique context of urbanization and industrialization

in the first North American city that constructed skyscrapers.

So indeed the living and working conditions of people in the city

at that time were extremely innovative, and

one had to understand what were their impacts on health and quality of life?

Now it's important to understand therefore that Human Ecology

is an approach which is pertinent for dealing with global health challenges.

There are some basic principles that we have to understand.

First of all, there are reciprocal relations between people and

their immediate environment.

And the environment is not just the physical or biological environment

as we've just understood, it is also a social environment.

And in that respect, the social dimensions of the living and working

conditions of people are integrated into a Human Ecology perspective.

The second point is that when we're talking about the relationship between

people and their environment, we're not treating them as a closed system, but

as an open system which can be impacted upon by external factors,

like extreme weather conditions or other dimensions of global environmental change.

The third principle which is extremely important

are the human regulatory mechanisms which people have always used

to adapt to their local living and working conditions, especially when these change

due to climatic conditions or other circumstances such as warfare.

So the capacity of humans to adapt to these kinds of external factors

is a characteristic that Human Ecology studies as a core concept.

In that respect, we move from the logic of interaction and

adaptation to change to the concept of co-evolution over time.

So that changes to ecosystems, be they built or

natural ecosystems, can reflect to or lead to changes in human behavior,

social organization, with the aim of sustaining human populations over time.

The foundations of Human Ecology in Chicago are extremely interesting, because

what we find when we go back and analyze the work that was done, we clearly, here,

with an example of the co-production of new knowledge to understand the living and

working conditions in a city with rapid industrialization,

rapid demographic growth, and rapid urbanization.

There was a large number of migrant workers moving into the city at that time.

And a group of sociologists, epidemiologists,

economists, and planners wanted to understand the living and

working conditions in that city for these different population groups and

how they impacted on their health and quality of life.

So these was the birthplace of an interdisciplinary approach

using a Human Ecology perspective that integrated the health component.

And it's from that perspective that I think it's important to provide my

own interpretation of health, which is a state or

condition resulting from the multiple interactions between people and

the biological, chemical, physical, social, and economic conditions

of their environment that should be compatible with their basic human needs.

And full functional activity, including reproduction over a long period.

This enlarged definition of health is an interdisciplinary approach to

understanding health and indeed the global health challenges that we face today.

It goes well beyond the biomedical model as I suggested before.

And it is based on a large amount of empirical evidence

which has been accumulating since the 1970s.

And from my own research, I therefore present a model of

eight sets of factors which are understood and

shown to influence the health status of individuals' households or

population groups in precise localities.

These eight sets of factors include personal characteristics, such

as the genetic code, which has long been understood as a determinant of health.

But also access to affordable primary health care,

which has also been understood as a crucial component.

And living conditions, behavior, and lifestyle traits.

But in addition to these, there is a large amount of evidence today

showing the education and employment can be related to health status.

That socio-economic status, especially poverty,

is a marker of health and quality of life.

We also know that political agendas are extremely important, so

that the political agendas of socio-democratic countries,

like the Scandinavian countries, are quite different to those like North America or

Switzerland, where health is in the privatized domain.

Information, media, and marketing are extremely important in terms of health

promotion and prevention, but they're also are the drivers of unhealthy lifestyles,

like the consumption of tobacco, fast foods, and so forth.

Last but not least, let me turn to the environmental dimension.

Because it is known today, that the environment at the macro,

the meso, and the micro level of living and

working conditions, does impact on health and quality of life.

Indeed, the World Health Organization has shown that at least 25% of

factors that impact on health are in the domain of the environment.

In order to apply this interdisciplinary approach,

it's clear that intersectoral collaboration is necessary.

And in order to do that, we have to build the kinds of bridges

that were constructed by professionals in Chicago in the 1920s,

in order to understand the living and working conditions

of the migrant populations and other residents in the city at that time.

The challenge today is however different.

We're not simply concerned with infectious diseases, but with non-communicable

diseases or the diseases of civilization, as some have called them.

So we need to build partnerships between professionals,

researchers, and people out there in the community

to deal with the global health challenges of the 21st century.

Before concluding, I draw your attention to some key references at the end of my

presentation which will enable you to take further some of the ideas I've presented.

Thank you for your attention.

[MUSIC]

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