Sustainability at the edge of chaos: its limits and possibilities in public health.
This paper critically reviews the expanding literature on applications of sustainability to healthcare policy and planning. It argues that the concept has been overgeneralized and has become a buzzword masking disparate agendas. It ignores the insights of the newest generation of systems theory on complex systems on the ubiquity of far-from-equilibrium conditions. Yet, a central meaning often ascribed to sustainability is the level continuation of healthcare programs and their institutionalization. Sustainability is only coherent in health care when it is more narrowly delimited to involve public health and treated as only one of several evaluative criteria that informs not only the continuation of programs but more often their expansion or contraction as needs dynamically change.
School of Social Work, Salem State University, 352 Lafayette Street, Salem, MA 01945, USA.
Christopher G
CG
Hudson
Yvonne M
YM
Vissing
D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D006801:Humans; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D011634:Public Health