Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly

Description

In this book by the award-winning author of Just Healthcare, Norman Daniels develops a comprehensive theory of justice for health that answers three key questions: what is the special moral importance of health? When are health inequalities unjust? How can we meet health needs fairly when we cannot meet them all? Daniels' theory has implications for national and global health policy: can we meet health needs fairly in ageing societies? Or protect health in the workplace while respecting individual liberty? Or meet professional obligations and obligations of justice without conflict? When is an effort to reduce health disparities, or to set priorities in realising a human right to health, fair? What do richer, healthier societies owe poorer, sicker societies? Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly explores the many ways that social justice is good for the health of populations in developed and developing countries.

Norman Daniels is Mary B. Saltonstall Professor and Professor of Ethics and Populations Health at Harvard School of Public Health. A member of the Institute of Medicine, a Fellow of the Hastings Center, a Founding Member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and of the International Society for Equity in Health, he has consulted for organisations, commissions, and governments, including the United Nations, WHO, and the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine, on issues of justice and health policy. Dr Daniels is the author of numerous books. He has received fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and held a Robert Wood Johnson Investigator's Award as well as a Rockefeller Foundation grant for the international adaptation of benchmarks.

Norman Daniels has long been our preeminent authority on justice and health care. This book not only moves his thought along, but enriches it in a variety of illuminating ways. One could hardly ask for a better examination of the topic. It is revealing and compelling. -Daniel Callahan, Director, The Hastings Center "...[a] comprehensive study of the role that health should play in social policy, broadly defined to include even the economic and political structures of society...[Just Health] is a major contribution to the field and is likely to prove influential in the near term and beyond." -Samuel Y. Sessions, UCLA, New England Journal of Medicine