ABSTRACT
Influenced by broader trends in social science literature in the 1990s, health and healthcare research has begun to acknowledge a global dimension to health. Some of this research notes the expansion of American ‘for profit’ healthcare plans into the developing countries (British Medical Journal 1996), or convergence towards the bureaucratisation and rationalisation of healthcare systems around the globe (Turner 1995). Here, the concept is deployed to describe what is seen as a growing internalisation of medical knowledge, technology and healthcare systems. Other studies have identified links between the growth of tobacco consumption and the export of Western lifestyles around the globe (Potter 1997), and the growth in global liberalisation of trade and markets with knock-on effects for health linked to restructuring of labour markets and uncertain employment prospects (Walt 1998). Potential threats to health are also being identified in relation to global changes in the physical environment, such as ozone depletion and skin cancers or global warming and alterations in vector habitats and disease patterns (Bentham 1994; McMichael and Haines 1997).
