Public Health Ethics
Volume 4 Issue 3 November 2011
http://phe.oxfordjournals.org/content/current

Original Articles
Public Health and Public Goods
Jonny Anomaly
Public Health Ethics (2011) 4(3): 251-259 doi:10.1093/phe/phr027

Abstract
It has become increasingly difficult to distinguish public health (and public health ethics) from tangentially related fields like social work. I argue that we should reclaim the more traditional conception of public health as the provision of health-related public goods. The public goods account has the advantage of establishing a relatively clear and distinctive mission for public health. It also allows a consensus of people with different comprehensive moral and political commitments to endorse public health measures, even if they disagree about precisely why they are desirable.