Essays on Strategy and Public Health

This book is a collection of essays that explore commonalities and contrasts between strategy in armed conflict and strategy in public health, disciplines linked by the devastating consequences of strategic failure. The formal sections use the asymptotic limit theorems of information and control theories to study strategy as an exchange of messages between adversaries, in the context of underlying power relations. The ‘messages’ to be exchanged are constructed from an ‘alphabet’ of tactics available to each contender, in a large sense. The formal development is interspersed with a number of case histories from this perspective, ranging across agribusiness-generated pandemics, through tuberculosis and COVID-19. The final chapter attempts a strategic synthesis applicable more specifically to public health than to the remarkably – and disturbingly – close parallel of armed conflict. Taking a unique approach to public health tactics and strategy this volume will be of interest to social epidemiologists, public health economists, public policy scientists, as well as public health researchers and practitioners.