THE GOVERNMENT has been urged by a group of bishops to pay more attention to improving public health rather than just providing health services.
The Council for Justice and Peace, set up by the Irish Catholic bishops, published Caring for Health in Ireland yesterday, which analyses the healthcare reform outlined in the programme for government.
The council said it was concerned that the Government’s thinking paid too little attention to the social factors which affect health and focused on a narrow health-services view of health policy.
Council chairman Bishop Raymond Field said understanding of health must be wider than just healthcare. “A multidimensional approach is needed. For instance, one of the things we highlighted in our document is the impact of education on the choices people make in relation to their health.”
Lead author Prof Tony Fahey, head of social policy in UCD’s school of applied social sciences, said medical services were only one of the factors that would help improve the population’s health.
“We need a balanced approach that will give due attention to medical services but will also give proper weight to other factors, such as educational disadvantage, that also influence health,” he said. “What we need, therefore, is a health policy, not just a health services policy.”
Prof Fahey said the health services system was “massively inequitable and inefficient” but the Government’s plans for reform made a welcome attempt to tackle many of the worst features of the system.
The bishops set up the council to promote the church’s social teaching and it advises on issues of social concern.
