Beyond vulnerable groups: contexts and dyamics of vulnerability

dc.contributor.authorZarowski, Christina
dc.contributor.authorHaddad, Slim
dc.contributor.authorNguyen, Vinh-Kim
dc.date.accessioned2017-07-04T07:26:21Z
dc.date.available2017-07-04T07:26:21Z
dc.date.issued2013
dc.description.abstractThis paper reviews approaches to vulnerability in public health, introducing a series of 10 papers addressing vulnerability in health in Africa. We understand vulnerability as simultaneously a condition and a process. Social inequalities are manifest in and exacerbate three key dimensions of vulnerability: the initial level of wellbeing, the degree of exposure to risk, and the capacity to manage risk effectively. We stress the dynamic interactions linking material and social deprivation, poverty, powerlessness and ill health: risks or shocks and their health impacts are intimately interconnected and reinforce each other in a cycle which in the absence of effective interventions, increases vulnerability. An inductive process which does not begin with an a priori definition or measurement of ‘vulnerability’ and which does not assume the existence of fixed ‘vulnerable groups’ allowed us both to re-affirm core aspects of existing conceptual frameworks, and to engage in new ways with literature specifically addressing vulnerability and resilience at the population level as well as with literature – for example in ecology, and on the concept of frailty in research on aging – with which researchers on health and poverty in Africa may not be familiar. We invite conceptual and empirical work on vulnerability in complex systems frameworks. These perspectives emphasize contexts and nonlinear causality thus supporting analyses of vulnerability and resilience as both markers and emergent properties of dynamic interactions. We accept a working definition of vulnerability, and recognize that some definable groups of people are more likely than others to suffer harm from exposure to health risks. But we suggest that the real work – at both intellectual and policy/political levels – lies in understanding and responding to the dynamics, meanings and power relations underlying actual instances and processes of vulnerability and harm.en_US
dc.description.accreditationDepartment of HE and Training approved list
dc.identifier.citationZarowski, C. et al. (2013). Beyond vulnerable groups: contexts and dyamics of vulnerability. Global Health Promotion, 20 (1): 3-9en_US
dc.identifier.issn1757-9759
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10566/3035
dc.identifier.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1757975912470062
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.privacy.showsubmitterFALSE
dc.publisherSage Publicationsen_US
dc.rightsThis is the author-version of the article published online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1757975912470062
dc.status.ispeerreviewedTRUE
dc.subjectVulnerabilityen_US
dc.subjectPopulation healthen_US
dc.subjectComplex systemsen_US
dc.subjectAfricaen_US
dc.subjectSocial determinants of healthen_US
dc.subjectInterdisciplinarityen_US
dc.titleBeyond vulnerable groups: contexts and dyamics of vulnerabilityen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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