The DPSEEA model: one way to support the 'multiple narratives' of ecological Public Health

Abstract

Ecological Public Health highlights the impact of globalization & capitalism on our physical & human landscapes. A shift in the Public Health paradigm, is argued, to move from an ideological-laden "single narrative" of unsustainable "risk assessment" to "multiple narratives" of sustainability, considering ecological breakdown and climate change. Public Health, globally is a more blended community, with an awareness of a diversity of philosophical and culturally-defined values, perspectives & thoughts but the "single narrative" (Atran 2007) of unecological, unsustainable Public Health persists. Drawing on Berlin's work he provides insight how certain political movements inspired individuals and nations' devotion to their 'ideology', by harnessing humans' ability for cognitively inflexibility, intellectual acquiescence and self-interested... These powerful prerequisites for the maintenance of Unsustainable Public Health ideology in the 21st Century remain. We should recognise these intellectual barriers, when striving for ecological, sustainable PH in the face of self-interested global Capitalism. The DPSEEA framework is one way to connect distal determinants of health and explain health development as interplay between humans and their surroundings. It highlights the intellectual shift required to move from a single narrative of "biological risk-assessment" to "multiple narratives" of environmentally contextualized, ecological, sustainable Public Health.