Health justice after the social determinants of health revolution

Social Determinants of Health (SDH) theorists claim that the distribution of social goods such as income, housing and education, has as great or greater an impact on health outcome than does health care, narrowly construed. This article attempts to integrate this claim into a plausible theory of justice. I argue that such a theory must be both political, in that it focuses on goods that states can distribute or regulate effectively and appropriately, and holistic, in that it must integrate the various values that are relevant to distribution into a plausible overall theory. While SDH-based theories are appropriately political, many of their exponents tend to undertake the task of integration in an implausibly monistic manner. I argue that monists about health are caught between the horns of an unattractive dilemma: either they employ a narrow conception of health, in which case their prescriptions are grounded in an implausible conception of the human good, and give rise to an extreme form of paternalism; or they use a broader conception of health, which leads them to address the challenge of holism in a purely rhetorical manner. I argue for a pluralistic mode of integration, one that accepts that social goods are regulated by both consequentialist and non-consequentialist considerations, and that the range of consequences that are relevant do not relate merely to health.