Environments for health

As scholars of public health may be aware, distinctions between environmental and individual determinants of health and well-being can be traced back to Hygeia and Asclepius of ancient Greek legend, who represented, respectively, the ideals of prevention and cure, and of ecology and engineering. Such ideas have persisted throughout the history of public health work, without being necessarily put into practice. In late modern Western health care systems, the vast majority of funding targeted at curative, individualized, and medicalized solutions. It is the resulting colonization of health by medicine, the emphasis upon individualized, curative interventions, and the negation of environmental and contextual factors in understanding and improving the health of communities that are the subject of critique in Environments for Health.