Public health and public goods

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. © The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press.