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17: Health Security in the Context of Social-ecological Change

  • Page ID
    75949
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    Learning Objectives
    • Demonstrate an understanding of determinants of health, health security and social-ecological systems and the roles they play in supporting health.
    • Explicate the inter-relationships between political and economic power, environmental change, and health security in particular places/watersheds/ecosystems/ecoregions through the use of different frameworks and theories. Explain how these dynamics operate at, and across, different scales.
    • Illustrate the particular challenges that the diversity, breadth and complexity of health security problems and responses pose to understanding, practice and research. Select and apply different approaches and use a suite of observational and analytic tools to address health security problems.
    • Draw on critical understanding of concepts, relationships, and tools as well as their values, motivations and place in the world, to formulate responses (actions, interventions and practice or policy changes) to promote health security. Consider the ways that these may be applied in different professional and organizational settings.

    Chris G. Buse, Donald C. Cole and Margot W. Parkes

    The focus of this chapter is to demonstrate interlinkages between changing ecological and social systems and health security. Moving beyond dynamics of disease spread and bioterrorism, we draw attention to the reciprocal relationships between living and social systems to exemplify how health security operates at this interface. We clarify key concepts of health, public health, the determinants of health, health security and social-ecological systems, demonstrating their implications for how we understand and respond to health security issues. In doing so, this chapter critically analyzes the health security discourse, and forwards new tools and approaches to expand our understanding of the multiple ways in which health is impacted by changes to ecosystems and resulting social change.


    17: Health Security in the Context of Social-ecological Change is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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