ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 defuses the public health “boundary problem”—the fear that public health could exceed its proper disciplinary and sociopolitical boundaries and thereby cause negative repercussions. On one hand, many philosophers vehemently insist that we must mind the “boundary problem” of carefully delineating and policing the boundary line that constrains what can be properly treated as a public/population health problem. On the other hand, public/population health scientists have now widely endorsed the idea that we must promote “Health in All Policies”. I argue that population health science is philosophically on the right track by searching the entire structure of society, not just healthcare and other obvious places, for the causes and effects of health and disease, a position bolstered by paying attention to the full range of risks at stake (“inductive risks” and other “epistemic risks”) when a broad vs. narrow model is chosen. The chapter’s case study illustrates the importance of a broad model of population health by exploring the work done, and work not yet done, on the population health aspects of global climate change.
