Revitalising global social medicine

• Published in: The Lancet (British edition) Vol. 398; no. 10300; pp. 573 - 574
• Main Authors: Pentecost, Michelle, Adams, Vincanne, Baru, Rama, Caduff, Carlo, Greene, Jeremy A, Hansen, Helena, Jones, David S, Kitanaka, Junko, Ortega, Francisco
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Elsevier Ltd 14-08-2021; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Activism; Aversion; Civil rights; Community health care; Epidemiology; Global health; Health care; Health care policy; Health insurance; Health risks; Health services; Hierarchies; HIV; Human immunodeficiency virus; Insurance; Medical personnel; Medicine; Political activism; Public health; Science; Sexuality; Sexually transmitted diseases; Social justice; STD; Traditions; United Kingdom > UK; Asia; United States > US; Europe; Africa; South Africa; Latin America; India
• ISSN: 0140-6736; 1474-547X
• DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01003-5

Social medicine in Asia developed through different traditions that emerged from varying political orientations, ranging from China's social medicine as state medicine to Japan's health insurance law to cover medical care for workers in 1922, which paved the way to universal health insurance coverage in 1961. In the USA, social medicine was rarely named as such in mainstream clinical practice, given the nation's early and sustained aversion to socialist politics, although free clinics and state-funded community health care have long been a centrepiece of the civil rights and HIV/AIDS activism which inspire contemporary health justice movements. [...]the medicine in global social medicine is a call to recognise a broad range of remedies for threats to health. The situations in which health-care providers are working in 2021 are fundamentally different from those of just 25 years ago, partly a result of the uptake of economic ideologies that have undermined public health and social safety net systems, increased concentration of wealth, and renewed political conflicts surrounding hierarchies such as those based on migration, race, gender, age, sexuality, and Indigenous status.