Videos from Vanderbilt Univ's Politics of Health conference.

Video from Politics of Health Conference at Vanderbilt University 3-4 October 2013

Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health & Society hosts "The Politics of Health," a two-day conference which explores the political exigencies of health and illness. The conference, held October 3 and 4, in Nashville, Tennessee, invites participants and attendees with a range of experiences, priorities, and backgrounds, to a conversation about the paradoxes and the promises of health.

The Politics of Health was held at Vanderbilt University on October 3-4 2013. Videos from the conference are available from the media page or through the links below:

·         Conference Opening Opening Remarks: Dean Carolyn Dever, Intro Remarks: Jonathan Metzl, Opening Address: Emilie Townes

·         Panel I: Health and Social Justice Chairs: Jonathan Metzl and Laura Stark, Discussants: André Churchwell, Manesh Sethi, Christopher Coleman, Melinda Buntin, and Arthur Sutherland III

·         Plenary Address, Day 1 Intro: Linda Norman, Speaker: Sue Siegel

·         Panel II: Health Infrastructure  Chair: Ken MacLeish, Respondents: Susan Cahn, Aimi Hamraie, Jay Clayton, Julia Landstreet, Kitt Carpenter

·         Panel III: Social Foundations of Health  Chairs: Derek Griffith and Dominique Behague, Keynote: Tyrone Forman, Respondents:Monique Lyle, Reavis L. Mitchell Jr., Lindsey Andrews, Arleen Tuchman, and Amy Non

·         Plenary Address, Day 2 Intro: Frank Dobson, Speaker: Priscilla Wald

Health is a political object par excellence: everyone agrees on its fundamental importance. Yet there is widespread disagreement about what health consists of, who needs it, and how we can equitably share its benefits. American politicians and communities spent the last two years arguing over whether a national healthcare system was a moral necessity or an egregious governmental overreach. The business of health has made a dizzying array of technologies and treatments available across the globe, but as a result health has also morphed into a commodity available only to some. Political, social and environmental issues—war, gun control, climate change, food security, discrimination—are increasingly understood in terms of their health effects, but their practical and social dimensions remain no less complex. Health is not just a state to strive for or a quantity we can posses, but a lens that reveals contention, suffering, and the possibility of better lives. Health, that is to say, is political.

The conference is organized around a series of interlinked themes that speak to the scale, urgency and intimacy of health as a political problem: inequality, infrastructure, justice, and aesthetics. A panel on justice and activism will consider the possibilities for health justice in settings of scarce money, time and attention. A panel on aesthetics and infrastructures will examine how seemingly distant economic and legal decisions about health are materialized in our everyday physical, social, and natural environments. And a panel on the social foundations of health will take on the persistent causes and consequences of health disparities. By opening the discussion to practitioners, scholars, activists, students, and community members, we aim to address health issues as they are now understood by a wide variety of stakeholders: not as a condition or an abstract object, but as an ongoing political project.