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A crucial contemporary public health issue is the construction and contestation of the relevance of the natural world to human health.

Taking a critical approach, this chapter examines how the natural environment as a health determinant is positioned in relation to the ‘social’ within social theory generally and social epidemiological studies of health, illness and disease specifically.

– This study shows how current constructions of social and natural environmental health drivers contour social approaches to the study of health and proposes an integrated social-ecological approach for generating new contributions of social epidemiology to research on environmentally driven health injuries.

– The research breaks ground for further social scientific studies of health and the environment and in particular substantiates the call for an extended notion of the ‘environment’ using ecological principles. Methodologically, the interdisciplinary reach of this research draws attention to the tensions that arise when working across the medical, natural and social sciences.

The goal of this chapter is to cultivate interest in the societal dynamic of ability expectations and ableism, a dynamic first thematized by the disabled people rights movement but which is also broadly applicable to the study of the relationship between humans, animals, and environments. Another aim of this chapter is to think about disabled people within ecosystem approaches to health through the ableism framework and to show that insights gained from disability studies are applicable to a broader study of health within contexts of environmental degradation. Building from this approach, the reader is invited to consider the utility of the conceptual framework of eco-ability “expectations” and eco-ableism as a way to understand health within coupled social-ecological systems.

This chapter uses an ability expectation and ableism lens and a disability studies and ability studies approach to analyze the relationship between humans, animals, and environments.

Certain ability expectations and ableism are responsible for (a) the invisibility of disabled people in ecological health discourses; (b) the standoff between anthropocentric and biocentric/ecocentric approaches to health; and (c) the application of scientific and technological advancements to address problems arising out of current relationships between humans, animals, and environments.

The reader is introduced to the concepts of ableism and eco-ableism, which have not yet been used in EcoHealth discourses and flags the need for further engagement with disability issues within the field.

Risk governance is being successfully inserted into scientific and political agendas as a way to understand and address complex problems, such as health problems that have both social and ecological dimensions. However, to date, the debate on risk governance has remained rather conceptual. This chapter addresses these lacunae through describing research that was conducted on the Flemish environmental health governance arrangement and draws on this empirical case study to suggest ways that risk governance can be put into practice.

The case study analysis was conducted through a mixed methods study that combined document analysis and data gathered through 22 in-depth interviews with environmental and health scientists as well as policymakers.

This research shows that the Flemish environmental health risk governance arrangement has succeeded in increasing the exchange of information between: (1) governments at a variety of levels; (2) scientists, policymakers and the general public and (3) environmental and public health civil servants. The analysis also provides insights into some shortcomings and makes recommendations for ameliorating this arrangement: (1) the integration of environmental health objectives into all relevant policy domains, (2) the need for additional research into environmental health indicators and (3) the facilitation of the co-production of knowledge and multi-actor governance.

Empirical contributions and analysis about risk governance and policy formation processes are not often conducted. The added value of this Flemish case study is that it presents an example of good practice from which lessons for future risk governance arrangements can be drawn.

This chapter studies the link between urban planning and health. Access to safe drinking water is already a very serious issue for large urban populations in fast-growing economies such as India. Water availability is further being impacted by climate change, leading to the drastically increased spread of water-related diseases.

Leh Town, which is located in an ecologically vulnerable semi-arid region of the Himalayas in Ladakh, has been considered for this study because it is undergoing large-scale transformation due to rapid growth in its tourism industry. In 2012–2013 our interdisciplinary group comprising researchers from Germany and India conducted field surveys, including geographic information system-based (GIS) mapping of point sources of water pollution, questionnaire surveys of 200 households and 70 hotels and guesthouses and semi-structured interviews. We also reviewed secondary medical data.

We found that diarrhoeal incidence has increased in the local population in Leh in the past decade, which may be linked to water pollution: Further, we found that rapidly increasing water consumption coupled with a lack of adequate water and sanitation infrastructure is causing serious water pollution.

Further, data is needed for causal connections between water pollution and health impacts to be conclusively drawn.

This study discusses the use of GIS to support a call for the need for more integrated urban planning and decision-making that holistically addresses water and health challenges in Leh and advocates the development of a decentralized or hybrid sanitation system to support water resources conservation as a central dimension of an integrated health management approach.

GIS is also a very useful platform for supporting participatory urban planning in Leh.

With such an integrated urban planning approach, Leh would be a lighthouse example for other towns in the region.

This paper aims to present a discursive and evaluative analysis of Energy + Illawarra, an Australian Government Low Income Energy Efficiency Program (LIEEP) funded interdisciplinary social marketing energy efficiency programme. Energy + Illawarra was a community programme working with low-income older people in Australia and involving social marketers, human geographers and engineers. The paper aims to identify how ecological systems theory can inform social marketing, and what practicalities there may be in doing so. The paper also aims to assess whether a social marketing programme that draws on ecological systems theory can have a positive impact on people’s thermal comfort.

First, the paper uses critical discursive analysis to examine the use of various elements of a social marketing energy efficiency programme in relation to the different levels of ecological systems theory. Second, a longitudinal cohort survey study design is used to evaluate the programme’s influence on people’s perceptions of thermal comfort and satisfaction with thermal comfort in their homes.

The study found that ecological systems theory could be an effective framework for social marketing programmes. The evaluation study found that the intervention had a positive impact on participant’s perceptions of thermal comfort, satisfaction with thermal comfort and attitudes towards energy efficiency. However, the paper identifies some potential tensions in using ecological systems theory and suggests that issues of power, representation, agenda setting, the need for reflexive practice and consideration of unintended consequences are important considerations in social marketing programmes.

The work presented here suggests that multi-level social marketing programmes that draw on ecological systems theory can make a useful contribution to social change as demonstrated by the evaluation survey finding positive impacts on thermal comfort and attitudes of participants. However, issues of power, representation, agenda setting, the need for reflexive practice and consideration of unintended consequences should be considered in social marketing programmes.

The purpose of this chapter is to offer reflections on conventional theories concerning causes and determinants of diseases. It also intends to examine both theoretical and empirical bases for adopting an Integrated Social-Ecological Systems (ISES) lens as a tool for understanding complexities related to drivers, determinants and causes of diseases.

We assessed the theoretical underpinnings of a range of historical and contemporary lenses for viewing infectious disease drivers and the implications of their use when used to explain both personal (i.e. individual) and population health. We examined these issues within the empirical context of the City of Dhaka (Bangladesh) by adopting an ISES lens. Within this study an emphasis has been placed on illustrating how feedback loops and non-linearity functions in systems have a direct bearing upon various aspects of infectious disease occurrences.

A brief triumph over microbes during the last century stemmed in part from our improved understanding of disease causation which was built using disciplinary-specific, monocausal approaches to the study of disease emergence. Subsequently, empirical inquiries into the multi-factorial aetiology and the ‘web of causation’ of disease emergence have extended frameworks beyond simplistic, individualistic descriptions of disease causation. Nonetheless, much work is yet to be done to understand the roles of complex, intertwined, multi-level, social-ecological factors in affecting disease occurrence. We argue, a transdisciplinary-oriented, ISES lens is needed to explain the complexities of disease occurrence at various and interacting levels. More theoretical and empirical formulations, with evidence derived from various parts of the world, is also required to further the debate.

Our study advances the theoretical as well as empirical basis for considering an integrated human-nature systems approach to explaining disease occurrence at all levels so that factors at the individual, household/neighbourhood, local, regional and global levels are not treated in isolation.

This paper aims to argue that resilience – and its underlying socio-ecological perspective – is a critical concept that could serve to integrate different views on, and approaches to, social marketing. The aim is to inspire social marketers to move away from narrow, issue-based interventions targeting individual behaviours and to consider the impact of social ecologies, particularly the contribution resilience research can make to behaviour change.

This is a conceptual paper; socio-ecological models and the resilience concept are discussed and applied to a current “wicked problem” – obesity.

From a socio-ecological perspective, research findings highlight the impact macro, meso and micro forces have on behaviour and the importance of a child’s micro-system and the influence it has on development and life outcomes. Building resilience requires a relationship-building, person-centred, holistic and long-term developmental approach to behaviour change.

This is a conceptual paper that introduces new concepts to the social marketing field. Future research should focus on understanding how to implement a resilience-building approach in practice – including the interrelationships and interactions between individual, family and community resilience – and how resilience can be integrated within systematic, socio-ecological thinking when addressing “wicked problems”.

Rather than blaming and targeting individuals, the goal should be to create an environment that supports parents, families and communities to build resilience at the micro, meso and macro levels. The findings support the argument that social marketers should adopt an upstream approach to develop interventions that make the environment the primary focus. Social marketers should collaborate with, and learn from, social workers, psychologists and educationalist to further their understanding of resilience. This would have a positive, sustainable impact on a whole range of social and health issues, ultimately helping to address the overarching issue of social inequality.

Building resilience amongst individuals, families and communities offer a means to achieve fundamental positive social change and to reduce social, economic and health inequality.

The paper offers a unique perspective on how and why resilience – and its underlying socio-ecological framework – should be applied within the social marketing field.

The increasing interest in economic, social, and ecological sustainability has important implications for the traditional views on organization effectiveness, organization design, and organization development. Managers need to design organizations to achieve a “triple bottom line.” A review of the organization effectiveness literature suggests that no single model seems to provide the necessary guidance, and there is a clear need for creation, revision, and integration. Organization effectiveness criteria in the future require a clearer modeling of the multistakeholder demands so that organization designers can specify appropriate strategies, structures, systems, and processes as well as the changes necessary to develop them. We propose an integration called “responsible progress” and suggest that it represents an important new stream of organization development theory. The relationships between this new criterion of organization effectiveness and the design features necessary to pursue them must be tested.