Public health crisis as problematization: A comparative analysis of opioid overdose and heart disease

This paper takes a common concept in Foucault and governmentality studies, problematization, to demonstrate its operational usefulness for analyzing public health crises. Social scientists have draw on this concept to discuss how phenomena become named as problems or issues of significance. We draw on a methodological use of the concept of problematization, to describe the process by which events become "problems" for governing; doing so enables critical sociologists to examine the nuanced ways that problems are defined, and, importantly, how solutions are proposed as a consequence of this process. We contend that the process of problematization, in two cases of public health crises, opioid overdose deaths, and "premature" coronary heart disease deaths, tends to describe the problem as a result of individual choices, which is used to justify intervention at the individual level. The paper concludes with a discussion of the normative upshots of using this concept for critical sociological analysis of public health issues.