Tag: wellbeing and prevention

From the Conversation|Let’s treat the social causes of illness rather than just disease

The ‘Conversation’ today 1 October 2013 – re blogged by Grace Gawler: Let’s treat the social causes of illness rather than just disease. Fiona Stanley is the director of this year’s Melbourne Festival of Ideas: The Art and Science of Wellbeing, which opens today and continues until October 6, 2013. She is a Perinatal and pediatric epidemiologist; founding director and patron of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research and a distinguished professorial fellow at University of Western Australia.

Authored by Fiona Stanley and Published in the ‘Conversation’ today 1 October 2013 – re blogged by Grace Gawler.

Fiona Stanley
Fiona Stanley

Fiona Stanley is the director of this year’s Melbourne Festival of Ideas: The Art and Science of Wellbeing, which opens today and continues until October 6, 2013.

Perinatal and pediatric epidemiologist; founding director and patron of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research; distinguished professorial fellow at University of Western Australia

Let’s treat the social causes of illness rather than just disease

By Fiona Stanley, University of Western Australia

Fiona Stanley is the director of this year’s Melbourne Festival of Ideas: The Art and Science of Wellbeing, which opens today and continues until October 6, 2013.

Here she explains the ethos behind the Festival’s program.

Diseases are complex and their causes myriad. A relatively new field of research known as the “social determinants of health” shows that merely treating illness is not the best approach to what ails us, we need a comprehensive overhaul of what we are doing and to address underlying social mechanisms that harm well-being.

My medical training in the 1970s focused on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases – it rarely addressed the question of why people got them.

But as a young doctor working in child health, particularly with Aboriginal children, it became obvious to me that prevention of disease was by far the best way to practice medicine; it’s more humane and definitely more cost-effective.

In 1972, I left Australia to study epidemiology and public health in the United Kingdom and then the United States, where these disciplines were well advanced. I learnt of the limitations of modern medicine, that prevention was the key to health and that many diseases commenced in social adversity.

The most exciting thing for me was that it was also the beginning of the push for disease registers, large population data sets and data linkage – all skills I brought back to Australia. Continue reading “From the Conversation|Let’s treat the social causes of illness rather than just disease”