Public Health meets Occupational Health
Am Freitag, den 16. März fand die GV der SGAH statt, in Form eines Symposiums. Hier der Bericht über die Tagung in der IZA und unten meine einführenden Worte zu dieser Veranstaltung:

The often-quoted William Osler wrote “The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.” But more and more we focusing on resilience and self-management, shifting the emphasis to health rather than illness.

There are many definitions about Health. A well accepted one is "Health as the ability to adapt
and self-manage, in light of the physical, emotional and social challenges of life.", proposed
by Machteld Huber 2011 in the BMJ. That is close by the definition of Georges Canguilhem. In
his 1943 book, “The Normal and the Pathological”, Canguilhem rejected the idea that there is
a normal or abnormal state of health. He saw health not as something defined statistically or mechanistically. Rather, he saw health as the ability to adapt to one’s environment. Health is
not a fixe identity. It varies for every individual, depending on their circumstances. We know, if leisure and activity, challenge and reflection, are in a good balance, most of us are in a healthy
and satisfying situation.

All of us are engaged in Health. And more and more, we should come in a behavior, which is
called holistic. One of the first approaches on this pathway was made by George Cheyne. He published in 1714 an article about “The English malady, or, a treatise of nervous diseases of
all kinds: as spleen, vapours, lowness of spirits, hypochondriacal, and hysterical distempers,
etc. in three parts.” Cheyne proposed a cure for Body and Soul. Possible he was inspired by Bernhard de Mandeville’s work “The fable of the Bees.”

A quote from the new report to the “Health Equity Strategy”, from the Federal Office of Public Health. ““Being poor makes you sick” and “being sick makes you poor” briefly describe the
often unfavourable interplay between social determinants of health on the one hand and health behaviour and state of health on the other.”

An example for the common interests of Public, Organizational and Occupational Health is: “Both prenatal psychosocial stress and exposure to exogenous environmental chemicals have been
found to be independently associated with increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, inclu-
ding low birth weight, gestational hypertension and preterm birth.” Stress and exposure to chemicals, we have in various situations in life, at work, during traffic and at home.

Public health and occupational health practice have common aims, namely:
Health improvement, making systems, organizations less stressful
Healthcare mainly preventive and salutogenetic
Health protection, e.g. from exposure to environmental hazards.

“Public Health meets Occupational Health” and I promote, we should meet Societal Health to.
“There is a pressing need to step up global and national action on non-communicable diseases,
and the factors that put so many people at risk of illness and death from these conditions worldwide ... action that is led by the highest levels of government and that inserts health concerns into all policy making – from trade and finance to education, environment, and urban planning.”, wrote Tabaré Ramón Vázquez, President of Uruguay in Lancet in September 2017. Nicely said, and let us hope. Yes, we should talk about organizational health. We should talk
about a healthy society. The Target is maybe something like: “A healthy start in a health Society.” That means with the words from Marcel Tanner: “No roots, no fruits”, ore with Michael Marmot
“A healthy start for a healthy life.”

My questions are; “How we get more cooperative, then competitive?” and another one is,
“How to empower the society to a less stressful behavior?”
There is still some sort of line to be toed, I thought.
This week is the global brain week. A good reason to discuss together. Thank You to be here.

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