[EQ] Health Justice: An Argument From the Capabilities Approach

Book and Media Reviews | May 16, 2012
Health Justice: An Argument From the Capabilities Approach

Joseph J. Fins, Division of Medical Ethics, Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York
JAMA. May 16 2012;307(19):2106-2106. doi:10.1001/jama.2012.481

Website: http://bit.ly/JxmVhe

“…….Sridhar Venkatapuram's Health Justice provides a lucent account of the intersection of health policy and social justice and helps explains why it is unfair to saddle the poor with expectations that they may not be able to meet.
The issue is not simply the double standard of asking a poor person with diabetes and mental illness to be more adherent to a program than a Wall Street mogul who still smokes after vascular surgery. Venkatapuram makes the point that the unfairness stems from something else: the relationship between health and capabilities….”

“…..Venkatapuram, a Wellcome Trust Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Lecturer at Cambridge, argues that one cannot divorce health justice from a broader notion of fairness in society. Building on a distinguished lineage of scholarship from John Rawls, Michael Marmot, Martha Nussbaum, and Amartya Sen, Venkatapuram argues that the point is not fair and equal access to health. Instead, it is ensuring the support and social context necessary to have the capability of being healthy and pursuing a life plan…”

Sridhar Venkatapuram Cambridge, United Kingdom, Polity Press, 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5035-7………..

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