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Jennifer Power on local solutions to global wellness.

Article Excerpt
Theodore MacDonald Third World Health: Hostage to First World Wealth Radcliffe Publishing, Oxford 2005

In the 1970s, the now well-known Whitehall Studies investigated the prevalence of heart disease and mortality rates among British civil servants. The studies were one of the first to provide conclusive evidence of a material basis to the hierarchy of ill-health that, commonsensically, everyone already knew existed. Those in the upper ranks of the civil service generally had superior physical health to those in the lower ranks.

What was most interesting about these studies was that they also showed there was no obvious association between individual lifestyle factors and heart disease. Level one civil servants did not necessarily eat fattier hamburgers or inhale more tobacco smoke than those in level six. The studies' authors concluded that higher rates of heart disease among lower ranked civil servants could possibly be explained by the stress or anxiety that comes with having limited control over one's every day life and a sense of powerlessness (alienation). Even in the western world where basic healthcare is generally accessible, an individual's physical...

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