The Intrinsic Relationship between Local Politics and Public Health

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Our panel brings to bear new, novel theory and rigorous empirics on a key topic: the local politics of public health. As a field, local and urban politics has made critical developments in our understanding of social inequality and its implications for democracy. Many of these social policy structures and components studied in local politics are known as the social or structural determinants of health – high level systems including the built environment and local policies, that have the greatest influence on individual and public health compared to any other factors. Yet, urban and local politics has not thought of its contribution to our understanding of public health, despite studying these very systems that directly contribute to public health.

This panel argues that local politics and public health are intrinsically related. Bridging the two to generate a local politics of public health will not only have important implications for public health but will improve our understanding of key features of local politics and policy. This includes the functioning of local public health agencies, which has been broadly understudied, as well as the democratic dynamics of local jurisdictions’ decisions regarding conceptions of public health, and structures and policies that affect public health. As public health issues and policies necessarily affect all citizens, improving our understanding of: the functioning of local public health; why local public health may be developed for some as opposed to all; and the relationship between conceptions of public health (what and for whom) and policy feedbacks for local public health governance, actors, and the public; will enhance our understanding of the complex relationships between local politics, policy, and democracy.

The panel brings together four articles to build a local politics of public health. Authors Strach and Sullivan examine the political development of sanitation workers seeking power in public health agencies in the late 19th century, and the implications for public health and inequality. De Paula Moreira and colleagues investigate drivers of local media declarations of racism as a public health crisis in their communities, and the impact of public health declarations on local TV news coverage of racism. Jarman and colleagues evaluate the implications of special district governance for the provision of local public health services and health equity, in the case of mosquito control in Florida. Finally, authors Kuo and Kelly investigate the COVID-19 policy response at the county-level in California, and the roles of formal and informal capacity in explaining the functioning of county public health responses.

Sub Unit

• Division 30: Urban Politics

Individual Presentations

• Building the Plane While Flying: Informal State Capacity and Public Health - Andrew S. Kelly, California State University, East Bay; Didi Kuo, Stanford University

• Public Good and Power: Sanitarian Conflicts, 1866-1920 - Patricia Strach, University at Albany, SUNY; Kathleen S. Sullivan, Ohio University

• ‘Not Routinely Available’? Governance and Mosquito Borne Diseases in Florida - Holly Jarman, University of Michigan; Phillip M. Singer, University of Utah; Charley Ellen Willison, Cornell University

• Racism Declarations and Local TV News Coverage of Racism - Natalia Moreira, Wesleyan University; Sarah E. Gollust, University of Minnesota; Erika Franklin Fowler, Wesleyan University; Steven Moore, Wesleyan University

Chair

• Charley Ellen Willison Cornell University

Discussant

• Richardson Dilworth Drexel University