CFP: POLITICAL THEORY AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Well,I figured I could send this to Daniel and he could post it, or I could just get off my butt and do it myself. Figuratively speaking, anyhow.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Workshops in Political Theory - Fifth Annual Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University
10-12 September 2008

PANEL: POLITICAL THEORY AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Public health is an area of health care focused on the health of groups or populations. However, such activities can be controversial for at least two reasons. First, public health action involves collective activities, often through government-sponsored interventions. This raises concerns about the legitimate scope of government action in relation to public health or the proper distribution of individual and collective responsibility for health. Second, public health often focuses on the prevention of harm or risk reduction rather than treatment. This raises important concerns about priority-setting in health and the proper distribution of scarce resources in the promotion of health across populations and, particularly, vulnerable groups within society. There has been a recent surge of interest in the discussion of these issues within the growing field of 'public health ethics'. The purpose of this workshop is to explore the many ways that political theory and political philosophy may contribute to the development of this field and thereby contribute to normatively justified public health theory and practice. The organisers invite original contributions to a host of relevant questions, including (but not restricted to):

How do (should) political theorists think about 'public' health?
What role do the values of justice, freedom, equality etc. play in public health?
What obligations do health workers and ordinary citizens have to those in need within their own communities or across the globe?
How should we understand notions of public health risks and harms, and how should we respond to them individually or collectively?
What would a democratically accountable public health practice look like?
The organisers are interested in receiving proposals that discuss central conceptual concerns in the discussion of public health as well as papers that employ a political theory perspective to address specific practical concerns.

If you would like to present a paper at this workshop, please send an abstract of 300-500 words to Angus Dawson (a.j.dawson@keele.ac.uk) or Jurgen De Wispelaere (jurgen.dewispelaere@tcd.ie) by April 30, 2008. Contributions may be invited to submit for a special issue of Public Health Ethics (http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/phe/) on political philosophy and public health to appear in 2009.

For further information, please visit the conference website: www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/pap/events/wptCALL FOR PAPERS

-Kelly Hills (with thanks to Bonnie Steinbock for the forward)