The McKeown Thesis: A Historical Controversy and Its Enduring Influence
James Colgrove, MPH
James Colgrove is with the Program in the History and Ethics of Public Health and Medicine, Division of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY.
Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to James Colgrove, MPH, Columbia University, 600 W 168th St, New York, NY 10032 (e-mail: jc988{at}columbia.edu).
The historical analyses of Thomas McKeown attributed the modernrise in the world population from the 1700s to the present tobroad economic and social changes rather than to targeted publichealth or medical interventions. His work generated considerablecontroversy in the 1970s and 1980s, and it continues to stimulatesupport, criticism, and commentary to the present day, in spiteof his conclusions' having been largely discredited by subsequentresearch. The ongoing resonance of his work is due primarilyto the importance of the question that underlay it: Are publichealth ends better served by targeted interventions or by broad-basedefforts to redistribute the social, political, and economicresources that determine the health of populations?
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