November 9, 2007
First thing I do every day is to listen to the local and National news on the ABC. Every day I hear a litany of disasters; shootings, stabbings, violence to children, domestic violence, road rage, rapes, burglary, road deaths, white collar crime; the list goes on interspersed in the political and community chatter for law and order action, get tougher, put more in jail and so on.
Very occassionally an academic calls for us to look a little deeper, look at why people behave they way they do. Unfortunately little attention is given to such suggestions. In Europe there is a program sponsored by the World Health Organisation that has been running for several years which addresses many of the causes of our behaviour.
The healthy cities program is centred around ten social determinants of health.The details can be found in the booklet "Social Determinants of Health THE SOLID FACTS."
Ten different but interrelated aspects of the social determniants of health are dicussed. "They explain:
1. the need for policies to prevent people from falling into long term disadvantage;
2. how the social and phychological environment affects health;
3. the importance of ensuing a good environment in early childhood;
4. the impact of work on health;
5. the problem of unemployment and job insecurity;
6. the role of friendship and social cohesion;
7. the dangers of social exclusion;
8. the effects of alcohol and other drugs;
9. the need to ensure access to supplies of healthy food for everyone;
10 the need for healthier transport systems".
Number three embraces early childhood intervention. There are many, many studies throughout the world. One I have examined, followed groups through their development into young adults. Those who enjoyed the benefits of the program compared to those who did not, had jobs, were healthier, committed fewer crimes, etc. The author also said the cost benefits were positive.
The Labor party appears to be adopting this approach. Numbers 4,5 and 6 relate to the Government's Work Choice legislation. Studying these determinants leads me to conclude that when a society is driven only by economic imperatives and the social issues are largely ignored the problems we have today are the result .Things have become even more complicated when we address the community's concern about climate change. We need a change of direction.
The WHO document can be found here.
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Len,
Mark Latham did address some of these issues in his early books, when he was an up-and-coming politician thinking about the death of social democracy. His argument was that the conditions that sustained the old social democratic ‘project’ of the earlier twentieth century--the welfare state- social democracy -- no longer applied. What was needed were different, more dispersed, solutions to ensure social justice.
David Burchell describes Latham's account well at Australian Policy Online:
Latham did have a go at rethinking this in terms of the Third Way.