dc.contributor.author | Zarowsky, Christina | |
dc.contributor.author | Haddad, Slim | |
dc.contributor.author | Nguyen, Vinh-Kim | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2016-08-12T10:40:05Z | |
dc.date.available | 2016-08-12T10:40:05Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2013 | |
dc.identifier.citation | Zarowsky, C. et al. (2012). Beyond 'vulnerable groups': contexts and dynamics of vulnerability. Global Health Promotion, 20(1): 3-9 | en_US |
dc.identifier.issn | 1757-9759 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10566/2374 | |
dc.description.abstract | This paper reviews approaches to vulnerability in public health, introducing a series of 10
papers addressing vulnerability in health in Africa. We understand vulnerability as simultaneously a
condition and a process. Social inequalities are manifest in and exacerbate three key dimensions of
vulnerability: the initial level of wellbeing, the degree of exposure to risk, and the capacity to manage
risk effectively. We stress the dynamic interactions linking material and social deprivation, poverty,
powerlessness and ill health: risks or shocks and their health impacts are intimately interconnected and
reinforce each other in a cycle which in the absence of effective interventions, increases
vulnerability. An inductive process which does not begin with an a priori definition or measurement of
'vulnerability' and which does not assume the existence of fixed 'vulnerable groups' allowed us both to
re-affirm core aspects of existing conceptual frameworks, and to engage in new ways with literature
specifically addressing vulnerability and resilience at the population level as well as with literature - for
example in ecology, and on the concept of frailty in research on aging - with which researchers on health
and poverty in Africa may not be familiar. We invite conceptual and empirical work on vulnerability in
complex systems frameworks. These perspectives emphasize contexts and nonlinear causality thus
supporting analyses of vulnerability and resilience as both markers and emergent properties of dynamic
interactions. We accept a working definition of vulnerability, and recognize that some definable groups
of people are more likely than others to suffer harm from exposure to health risks. But we suggest that
the real work -- at both intellectual and policy/political levels -- lies in understanding and responding to
the dynamics, meanings and power relations underlying actual instances and processes of vulnerability
and harm. | en_US |
dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
dc.publisher | Sage | |
dc.rights.uri | http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/issn/1757-9759/ | |
dc.source.uri | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1757975912470062 | |
dc.subject | Vulnerability | en_US |
dc.subject | Population health | en_US |
dc.subject | Complex systems | en_US |
dc.subject | Africa | en_US |
dc.title | Beyond 'vulnerable groups': contexts and dynamics of vulnerability | en_US |
dc.type | Article | en_US |
dc.privacy.showsubmitter | FALSE | |
dc.status.ispeerreviewed | TRUE | |
dc.description.accreditation | IBSS | en_US |