The McKeown Thesis
A Historical Controversy and Its Enduring Influence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11030232 |
|---|---|
| Authors | James Colgrove (0009-0006-6684-0469, James Colgrove is with the Program in the History and Ethics of Public Health and Medicine, Division of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY., corresponding author) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 92 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 725-729 |
| Publication date | 2002-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Public Health (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0090-0036 • E-ISSN: 1541-0048 |
| Publisher | American Public Health Association (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2105/ajph.92.5.725 |
| PMID | 11988435 |
| OpenAlex | W1999708205 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 59 |
| References cited | 30 |
The historical analyses of Thomas McKeown attributed the modern rise in the world population from the 1700s to the present to broad economic and social changes rather than to targeted public health or medical interventions. His work generated considerable controversy in the 1970s and 1980s, and it continues to stimulate support, criticism, and commentary to the present day, in spite of his conclusions' having been largely discredited by subsequent research. The ongoing resonance of his work is due primarily to the importance of the question that underlay it: Are public health ends better served by targeted interventions or by broad-based efforts to redistribute the social, political, and economic resources that determine the health of populations
Criminology · Criticism · Environmental health · Political science · Politics · Population · Psychiatry · Psychological intervention · Public health · Public health interventions · Sociology · Climate Change and Health Impacts · Global Health Care Issues · Health disparities and outcomes · Law · Medicine · Nursing
Healthy Doctors – Sick Medicine
US regional and national cause-specific mortality and trends in income inequality
The social epidemiology of tuberculosis in South Africa
Os determinantes das condições de saúde das populações
Pesquisa em, sobre e para os serviços de saúde
Sectoral Job Training as an Intervention to Improve Health Equity
The Decline and Rise of Coronary Heart Disease
Public Health and the Risk Factor
Children with Half-Starved Bodies” and the Assessment of Malnutrition in the United States, 1890–1950
Global Health
Neoliberal Ebola
Inégalités de santé
Gender equality in science, medicine, and global health
Healthy or Sick?
Gender-transformative health promotion for women
How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died
Seeing the world upside down
From chemotherapy to biotechnology
Recalculating Swedish pre-census demographic data
Fictional father
Rating and Evaluating Health Systems
A confession of ignorance’
Health, wealth and party in inter-war London
Fertility versus productivity
The European Perspective on Pandemics
The Human Right to Health
The effects of nutrition on maternal mortality
The legacy of a standard of normality in child nutrition research
Health inequality in Britain before 1750
Action on the social determinants of health
Was Thomas McKeown right for the wrong reasons
When the right to be counted doesn’t count
Barriers to the Right to Health Among Patients of a Public Emergency Department After Implementation of the Affordable Care Act
Analysis of selected social determinants of health and their relationships with maternal health service coverage and child mortality in Vietnam
Using international human rights law to improve child health in low-income countries
Infant and child mortality in the past
Infant and child mortality in the past
Desigualdades em Saúde
Omission and commission in the development economics of Daron Acemoglu and Esther Duflo
Subjective judgements in scientific practice and art
McKeown and the Idea That Social Conditions Are Fundamental Causes of Disease
Rethinking McKeown
Rethinking McKeown
Triangulating on Success
Insidious habits”
The 1918 influenza pandemic did not accelerate tuberculosis mortality decline in early‐20th century Newfoundland
Pills, Power, People
Market Transition, Multidimensional Socioeconomic Status, and Health Disparities in Urban China
Does Medical Expansion Improve Population Health
Infant mortality among US whites in the 19th century
Squaring the Curve
The contribution of urbanization to changes in life expectancy in Scotland, 1861-1910
The dawn of Structural One Health
Neo-materialist theory and the temporal relationship between income inequality and longevity change
Beyond Material Explanations
Epidemic Inequities
Influenza pandemics throughout Brazilian history
Health at the dawn of development
L'espérance de vie des professions médicales aux Pays-Bas du xvi e au xx e siècle
The Increasing Disparity in Mortality between Socioeconomic Groups in the United States, 1960 and 1986
Medical Nemesis
Health inequalities among British civil servants
The Modern Rise of Population
The Role of Medicine
Declining mortality in the United States in the late nineteeth and early twentieth centuries
The Importance of Social Intervention in Britain's Mortality Decline c .1850–1914
Food for Thought
The Decline of Mortality in Europe
New York City's tuberculosis control efforts
Public health nihilism vs pragmatism
Socioeconomic status and health
An interpretation of the modern rise of population in Europe
Historical Demography
Population Studies of Mortality
A demographic study of the British ducal families
Health transition
Demography and Social Science
Fertility, mortality and causes of death an examination of issues related to the modern rise of population
An interpretation of the decline of mortality in England and Wales during the twentieth century
Reasons for the decline of mortality in england and wales during the nineteenth century
Population Change in Eighteenth-Century England. A Reinterpretation
Family Limitation in Pre-Industrial England
Medical Evidence Related to English Population Changes in the Eighteenth Century
The Population History of England 1541-1871. A Reconstruction
Social Conditions As Fundamental Causes of Disease
| Unique citing works | 59 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,46 |
| Citation span | 2002 - 2026 (25) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 50 |