Health of the people: The highest law?

Law and ethics in population health are having a renaissance. Once fashionable during the Industrial and Progressive eras, the ideals of population health began to wither with the rise of liberalism in the late twentieth century. In its place came a sharpened focus on personal and economic freedom. Political attention shifted from population health to individual health and from public health to private medicine. This article articulates a rational for the salience of population health and offers an action agenda for improving the health of the population.