Hans Eickhoff a
a Interdisciplinary Centre for Social Sciences (CICS.NOVA), Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (NOVA FCSH), NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal
While health expenditure per capita has more than doubled since 2000—both in low- and middle-income countries and in high-income countries—and its increase has been above GDP growth in most countries, health care systems are not only drivers of economic growth but also have significant ecological impact. Overall, the organization of health care is defined by the biomedical model while other determinants of ill health are vastly ignored. To explore concepts of health and health care in the degrowth movement, attendees of the 9th International Degrowth Conference that took place in Zagreb in 2023 were invited to fill in an online questionnaire on health, illness and death, the perceived causes of ill health, the use of health care services, and policies to take a degrowth transformation of health care forward. This paper reports back on the results of the questionnaire. While respondents were apparently caught between the desire to reduce the ecological footprint of health care and, at the same time, the wish to preserve its current achievements, the scope of current biomedical health care went without being truly challenged. In the face of these intricate uncertainties and dilemmas of increasing complexity, I argue for using a post-normal science framework—together with the inclusion of extended peer communities in the form of deliberative mini-publics and citizens’ assemblies—to develop a degrowth ethics of health and care, where all lives are considered equally valuable.
Hans Eickhoff a
a Interdisciplinary Centre for Social Sciences (CICS.NOVA), Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (NOVA FCSH), NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal
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