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The Mismarriage of Personal Responsibility and Health

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

GREG BOGNAR
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Abstract

This paper begins with a simple illustration of the choice between individual and population strategies in population health policy. It describes the traditional approach on which the choice is to be made on the relative merits of the two strategies in each case. It continues by identifying two factors—our knowledge of the consequences of the epidemiological transition and the prevalence of responsibility-sensitive theories of distributive justice—that may distort our moral intuitions when we deliberate about the choice of appropriate risk-management strategies in population health. It argues that the confluence of these two factors may lead us to place too much emphasis on personal responsibility in health policy.

Keywords

personal responsibilityindividual risk management strategy of public healthpopulation risk management strategy of public healthepidemiological transitionjustice in health careluck egalitarianismresponsibility-sensitivity
Type
Special Section: Causality and Moral Responsibility
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , April 2020 , pp. 196 - 204
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

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Footnotes

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank participants at a VR/FORTE Person Centred Care workshop in Linköping, Sweden. Financial support from the Swedish Research Council and from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare is gratefully acknowledged (2014–4024).

References

Notes

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