Addressing Health Care Disparities: A Radical Perspective and Proposal.

Donald W Light

doi:10.3389/fsoc.2020.00029

Abstract

This paper begins by rethinking the sociological theory that social conditions are fundamental causes of health disparities and that controlling disease ironically increases or creates them. While usually true, the radical proposal of non-profit health care and pharmaceutical development could ameliorate health disparities if a nation like Canada or a region like the EU looked to radically different but successful models such as the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative. It uses what could be called entrepreneurial collaboration for public health markets and inverts intellectual property to public health IP to maximize health gain instead of profits.

Highlights

This essay of ideas and the sociological imagination begins by providing a new perspective on the famous studies on social conditions underlying health care disparities and on the paradox that controlling disease can create or increase such disparities
The essay turns of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) as a working, successful model of a non-profit, virtual collaborative that researches, tests, gains approval, manufactures, and distributes clinically superior medicines at low cost and for wide access, reducing health care disparities
This model is illustrated by how DNDi has developed highly effective drugs to eradicate Hepatitis C and created an example of markets to maximize public health rather than to maximize profits

Summary

INTRODUCTION

This essay of ideas and the sociological imagination begins by providing a new perspective on the famous studies on social conditions underlying health care disparities and on the paradox that controlling disease can create or increase such disparities. The essay turns of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) as a working, successful model of a non-profit, virtual collaborative that researches, tests, gains approval, manufactures, and distributes clinically superior medicines at low cost and for wide access, reducing health care disparities. Ten years later, Phelan and Link (2005) explicated a paradox: controlling disease through costly interventions creates or increases health disparities, as people with more knowledge, money, and beneficial social connections have greater access and ability to harness medical advances and treatments than those with less They cited evidence from the United States and Europe; but this too is a global pattern, especially for middle and lower-middle countries, where income inequalities are often even greater. Unequal access to needed but patented, expensive medicines exacerbates existing disparities among disadvantaged populations

Reducing Health Care Disparities

DYSFUNCTIONS OF CURRENT DRUG DEVELOPMENT

THE DRUGS FOR NEGLECTED DISEASES INITIATIVE MODEL

Findings

PATENT RIGHTS FOR PUBLIC HEALTH