public health ethics is a field that covers both factual and ethical issues in health policy and science, and has positive obligations to improve the well-being of populations and reduce social inequalities. it is obvious that various philosophies and moral theories can differently shape the framework of public health ethics. for this reason, the present study reviewed theories of justice in or...

in his recent commentary, gorik ooms argues that “denying that researchers, like all humans, have personal opinions … drives researchers’ personal opinion underground, turning global health science into unconscious dogmatism or stealth advocacy, avoiding the crucial debate about the politics and underlying normative premises of global health.” these ‘unconscious’ dimensions of global health are...

A recent editorial by Naoki Ikegami has proposed three key lessons from Japan’s experience of achieving virtually universal coverage with primary healthcare services: the need to integrate the existing providers of primary healthcare services into the organised health system; the need to limit government commitments to finance hospital services and the need to empower providers of primary healt...

In light of the World Health Organization's declaration that non-dependent drinking contributes more to the global burden of alcohol-related disease than does drinking by those who meet diagnostic criteria for dependence, this paper argues that clinicians, researchers and decision-makers need to consider microsocial and macrosocial impacts of alcohol use, not just addiction and clinical effects...

In his recent commentary, Gorik Ooms argues that “denying that researchers, like all humans, have personal opinions … drives researchers’ personal opinion underground, turning global health science into unconscious dogmatism or stealth advocacy, avoiding the crucial debate about the politics and underlying normative premises of global health.” These ‘unconscious’ dimensions of global health are...

among the many reasons that may limit the adoption of promising reform ideas, policy capacity is the least recognized. the concept itself is not widely understood. although policy capacity is concerned with the gathering of information and the formulation of options for public action in the initial phases of policy consultation and development, it also touches on all stages of the policy proces...

politics is not the ghost in the machine of global health policy. conceptually, it makes little sense to argue otherwise, while history is replete with examples of individuals and movements engaging politically in global health policy. were one looking for ghosts, a more likely candidate would be democracy, which is currently under attack by a new global health technocracy. civil society moveme...