PHM-Exch> Food for a non-statistical thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 317

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*IN A WAY**, PUBLIC HEALTH DEALS WITH ‘STATISTICAL LIVES’ AND NOT WITH
‘REAL LIVES’ AS THE HUMAN RIGHT TO HEALTH DOES.*


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Public health cannot only revolve around that which is already
'evidence-based'. Why? Because this actually colludes with the status-quo.
For public health to restrict itself to an 'evidence-base' is also naïf.
Why? Because knowledge growth and social development have always and will
always operate through more than strictly evidence parameters. Public
policy in health must work with partial evidence, despite of (or in the
face of) it being partial. Often too much is at risk. Yes, it is important
to strengthen evidence, but there is no such thing as a perfect state of
evidence; there never will be. Public health decisions and actions have
always and will always be made and carried out in a context of contested
evidence, ignored evidence, rediscovered evidence, right evidence with the
wrong theory, wrong theory with the right evidence, evidence gathered
without policy consequences or, perhaps the best kind, ‘slow-burning
evidence’.

For the full Reader, go to

http://wp.me/plAxa-1Ib

Claudio
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