IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v17y2020i4p1420-d323910.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Submissive Relationship of Public Health to Government, Politics, and Economics: How Global Health Diplomacy and Engaged Followership Compromise Humanitarian Relief

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Peplow

    (Department of Health Services, University of Washington, White Swan, WA 98952, USA)

  • Sarah Augustine

    (Suriname Indigenous Health Fund, White Swan, WA 98952, USA)

Abstract

This paper describes efforts by public health practitioners to address a health crisis caused by economic development policies that are unrestrained by either environmental, public health, or human rights mandates. Economic development projects funded by international funding institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank that reduce poverty when measured in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in the transborder region between Suriname and French Guiana harm minority populations where commercial activities destroy, alter, and remove the resources upon which local communities depend. In this study, the structural causes of a community health crisis affecting Indigenous people in the transborder region between Suriname and French Guiana was addressed by seeking gatekeepers in government who have access to policy-making processes. We found that deeply rooted economic development policies structured social, economic, and political alliances and made them resistant to feedback and reform. We concluded that work must be focused beyond the simple exchange of public health information. Public health practitioners must become politically active to create new policy commitments and new patterns of governance that advance development as well as improve health outcomes. Failure to do so may result in public health practitioners becoming ‘engaged followers’ that are complicit in the inhumanity that springs from their acquiescence to the authority of government officials when their policies are the cause of preventable death, disease, and disability.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Peplow & Sarah Augustine, 2020. "The Submissive Relationship of Public Health to Government, Politics, and Economics: How Global Health Diplomacy and Engaged Followership Compromise Humanitarian Relief," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(4), pages 1-16, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:4:p:1420-:d:323910
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/4/1420/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/4/1420/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sumner, Andy, 2012. "Where Do The Poor Live?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 865-877.
    2. Annas, G.J. & Elias, S., 1999. "Thalidomide and the Titanic: Reconstructing the technology tragedies of the twentieth century," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 89(1), pages 98-101.
    3. Cobb, Roger & Ross, Jennie-Keith & Ross, Marc Howard, 1976. "Agenda Building as a Comparative Political Process," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 70(1), pages 126-138, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Peter Nunnenkamp & Albena Sotirova & Rainer Thiele, 2016. "Do Aid Donors Specialize and Coordinate within Recipient Countries? The case of Malawi," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 34(6), pages 831-849, November.
    2. Alkire, Sabina & Santos, Maria Emma, 2014. "Measuring Acute Poverty in the Developing World: Robustness and Scope of the Multidimensional Poverty Index," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 251-274.
    3. Rory Horner & David Hulme, 2019. "From International to Global Development: New Geographies of 21st Century Development," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 50(2), pages 347-378, March.
    4. Jose Antonio Alonso & Ana Luiza Cortez & Stephan Klasen, 2014. "LDC and other country groupings: How useful are current approaches to classify countries in a more hetergeneous developing world?," CDP Background Papers 021, United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs.
    5. Domínguez, Rafael & Olivié, Iliana, 2014. "Retos para la cooperación al desarrollo en el post-2015 /Challenges for Development Cooperation in the Post-2015," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 32, pages 995-1020, Septiembr.
    6. Beatriz Calzada Olvera, 2014. "The Millennium Development Goals after 2015: A Proposal for 2015-2030," Competence Centre on Money, Trade, Finance and Development 1401, Hochschule fuer Technik und Wirtschaft, Berlin.
    7. Wesselbaum, Dennis & Smith, Michael D. & Barrett, Christopher B. & Aiyar, Anaka, 2023. "A food insecurity Kuznets Curve?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    8. Bodenstein, Thilo & Kemmerling, Achim, 2015. "A Paradox of Redistribution in International Aid? The Determinants of Poverty-Oriented Development Assistance," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 359-369.
    9. Pattison-Williams, John K. & Haggar, Jeremy P. & Morton, John F., 2018. "Intergenerational perceptions of household wellbeing in India’s Western and Eastern Ghats," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 10, pages 51-57.
    10. Ravi Kanbur, 2017. "Citizenship, Migration and Opportunity," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(4), pages 429-441, October.
    11. Garrett Ward Richards, 2019. "The Science–Policy Relationship Hierarchy (SPRHi) model of co-production: how climate science organizations have influenced the policy process in Canadian case studies," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 52(1), pages 67-95, March.
    12. Azzarri, Carlo & Signorelli, Sara, 2020. "Climate and poverty in Africa South of the Sahara," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    13. Merz, Nicolas, 2017. "Gaining voice in the mass media: The effect of parties’ strategies on party–issue linkages in election news coverage," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 52(4), pages 436-460.
    14. Robin Davies & Jonathan Pickering, 2017. "How should development co-operation evolve? Views from developing countries," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 35, pages 10-28, July.
    15. Andy Sumner, 2016. "The world's two new middles Growth, precarity, structural change, and the limitations of the special case," WIDER Working Paper Series 034, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    16. Barbara Bechter & Bernd Brandl & Gerhard Schwarz, 2009. "Determinanten der Einstellung zu wirtschaftspolitischen Maßnahmen," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 37321, August.
    17. Ravi Kanbur, 2019. "Inequality in a global perspective," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 35(3), pages 431-444.
    18. Gianni Vaggi, 2017. "The rich and the poor: A note on countries’ classification," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 70(280), pages 59-82.
    19. Tobias Krause, 2015. "A Natural Experiment on Media Attention and Public Enterprise Accountability," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 297-315, June.
    20. Andy Sumner, 2012. "The Buoyant Billions: How “Middle Class†Are the New Middle Classes in Developing Countries? (And Why Does It Matter?)," Working Papers id:5169, eSocialSciences.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:4:p:1420-:d:323910. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.