In the final lecture of the 2012/2013 series of lectures provided by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH), Professor Jane MacNaughton, Medical Humanities, University of Durham, discusses the links between Medical Humanities and the idea of the Fifth Wave in Public Health. Professor MacNaughton talks about the common origins of these two areas of thinking, the parallels and commonalities in Medical Humanities and new ideas in Public Health, and then identifies the challenges, the advantages of applying both areas in practice. She talks about the differences between the medical perspective of illness and that of the patient’s perspective - their experience, the effect illness has on their ability to do things, to relate to others, to live their life as they previously did and how Medical Humanities reintroduces the human scale record into the education of medical students and doctors through the use of literature, art and philosophy to exemplify how illness is experienced and lived.
The fifth seminar in Series 7 took place on Wednesday 13th April 2011 at the Trades Hall of Glasgow. Public policy debates in industrialized societies tend to evolve around two instrumental subsystems: the economy and the welfare state. The ultimate goal of these subsystems - the well-being of citizens - receives very little attention. It seems as if policy makers assume that they understand it so well that it needs no special reflection. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The determinants of well-being have changed considerably in recent decades as societies have become wealthier, cultural norms and regulations have become more liberal, and the influence of the markets in everyday life has grown. Instead of scarcity and deprivation, the majority of people in affluent societies suffer from the "problem of choice" – an inability to make good choices for their own and others' well-being. Increasing concerns surrounding work-life balance, mental health, obesity, personal finances and children's development, as well as the rapidly growing markets for life management and well-being magazines, TV programmes and personal consulting services, suggest that this problem is real and has major societal impacts. This underlines the need to develop a better and more holistic understanding of everyday wellbeing that could serve as a basis for better individual decisions and public policy making. Improving knowledge about wellbeing is also crucial for innovating products and services to improve it. The more you know about the determinants of wellbeing in everyday life, the better products and services you can develop. Hence, wellbeing and competitiveness are not contradictory, rather they are consistent with each other.
Lists
Lists
