Daniel Goldberg, JD, PhD and co-authors find that medicalization defines behavioral and physiological responses to social phenomena as individual pathology and disease (often with elements of stigma and social control), which are in turn viewed as individual medical problems to be diagnosed, treated, and influenced by authorities within the field of medicine.

Medicalization has encroached into both population health science and public health, bringing with it a myopic focus on the role of the medical care delivery system in intervening upon individual acute medical and social needs. This leaves the root-cause social, economic, and political drivers of population health invisible, ignored, and undisturbed. 
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