The Intrinsic Relationship between Local Politics and Public Health

Our symposium brings to bear novel theory and rigorous empirics on a key topic: the local politics of public health. As a field, urban and local politics has made critical developments in our understanding of social inequality and its implications for democracy. Many social policy components and structures 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 ( Marmot et al. 2008 ). Yet, urban and local politics has not thought of its contribution to our knowledge of public health directly, despite studying these very systems that overwhelmingly contribute to the health and wellbeing of populations.