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Ethics & International Affairs
Annual Journal of the
Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs
Introduction
Mira Johri and Christian Barry
Abstract
In a recent global survey commissioned for the Millennium Summit of the United Nations, people around the world consistently mentioned good health as what they most desired. This preeminent concern with health is due no doubt both to the value that people attach to health in itself and to their recognition of its importance for pursuing their individual and collective projects.
While people agree on the value of health, policymakers, activists, and social theorists disagree sharply about the appropriate goals and optimal design of health systems. Sometimes disagreements are purely instrumental, relating only to the best means to achieve shared objectives. More often, however, they are a result of deeper differences concerning the role that a person’s health plays in determining the quality of his or her life and the extent to which ill health and inequalities in health reflect injustices in social institutions.
Discussions of the relationship between justice and health have focused primarily on questions such as how health systems should be structured and financed and how public resources spent on health should be balanced against other social goals. But recent studies indicating close connections between socioeconomic status and ill health have led many to recognize that the inability to achieve good health may result not only from lack of access to health care or other failures of domestic health systems, but also from inadequate social arrangements of different kinds and at many levels.
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