Liberalism, politics, and health planning.
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abstract
Recognizing the need for adequate health care and health planning, this article suggests three problems which are important for the improvement of planned change. Goals, authority, and community are important obstacles for the planner no matter what the specialization area. However, when planning for health, it is found that the planners' conceptualization of goals, authority, and community are important concepts which undermine planned change. The success or failure of a paradigm is usually determined by its usefulness in explaining future behavior. The success of health care planning as a separate field of urban planning will be determined more by its ability to distinguish itself from the present problems faced by the field of urbanplanning. The relative underdevelopment of a theory of health planning is probably indicative of the current state of the field. Further problems exist in the borrowing of much of the methodology which dominates urban planning without studies of the usefulness of these methodologies for the problems of public health. Finally, accurate projections of health needs must be assessed from outside the liberalism which dominates our political and social thinking about health.
