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The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been marred by a widespread failure to embed ethics in policymaking. The consequences have included vaccine hoarding by rich countries and the deaths of millions of people around the world. Governments have followed a simplistic narrative of science and finance teaming up against a virus and delivering a silver bullet in the form of a new vaccine, rather than recognizing that a health emergency reflects patterns of inequality within and across countries and other social factors that need to be addressed. Given the interconnection and interdependency of globalization, ethics must be incorporated in global health policy as a primary consideration, not an afterthought.

The article reviews the current theory and measurement of subjective wellbeing (SWB). The first two sections discuss growing efforts in many countries to measure and monitor national wellbeing, particularly in the United Kingdom. The third and fourth sections discuss the novelty and controversies about SWB research. It concludes that a critical approach is essential in evaluating SWB research but dismissing it offhand or framing it as antithetical to objective wellbeing is misconceived. The pressing issue for poverty research and public policy is to determine which insights about SWB are worth using, and how much space within conceptions of wellbeing used in public policy should be given to SWB.

I argue for a conception of health as a person's ability to achieve or exercise a cluster of basic human activities. These basic activities are in turn specified through free-standing ethical reasoning about what constitutes a minimal conception of a human life with equal human dignity in the modern world. I arrive at this conception of health by closely following and modifying Lennart Nordenfelt's theory of health which presents health as the ability to achieve vital goals. Despite its strengths I transform Nordenfelt's argument in order to overcome three significant drawbacks. Nordenfelt makes vital goals relative to each community or context and significantly reflective of personal preferences. By doing so, Nordenfelt's conception of health faces problems with both socially relative concepts of health and subjectively defined wellbeing. Moreover, Nordenfelt does not ever explicitly specify a set of vital goals. The theory of health advanced here replaces Nordenfelt's (seemingly) empty set of preferences and society-relative vital goals with a human species-wide conception of basic vital goals, or 'central human capabilities and functionings'. These central human capabilities come out of the capabilities approach (CA) now familiar in political philosophy and economics, and particularly reflect the work of Martha Nussbaum. As a result, the health of an individual should be understood as the ability to achieve a basic cluster of beings and doings—or having the overarching capability, a meta-capability, to achieve a set of central or vital inter-related capabilities and functionings.

This commentary is a brief response to Nir Eyal's argument that health policies should not make healthy behaviour a condition or prerequisite in order to access healthcare as it could result in the people who need healthcare the most not being able to access healthcare. While in general agreement due to the shared concern for equity, I argue that making health behaviour a condition to accessing healthcare can serve to develop commitment to lifestyle changes, make the health intervention more successful, help appreciate the value of the resources being spent, and help reflect on the possible risks of the intervention. I also argue that exporting or importing the carrot and stick policies to other countries without a solid understanding of the fiscal and political context of the rise of such policies in the US can lead to perverse consequences.

I argue for a conception of health as a person's ability to achieve or exercise a cluster of basic human activities. These basic activities are in turn specified through free-standing ethical reasoning about what constitutes a minimal conception of a human life with equal human dignity in the modern world. I arrive at this conception of health by closely following and modifying Lennart Nordenfelt's theory of health which presents health as the ability to achieve vital goals. Despite its strengths I transform Nordenfelt's argument in order to overcome three significant drawbacks. Nordenfelt makes vital goals relative to each community or context and significantly reflective of personal preferences. By doing so, Nordenfelt's conception of health faces problems with both socially relative concepts of health and subjectively defined wellbeing. Moreover, Nordenfelt does not ever explicitly specify a set of vital goals. The theory of health advanced here replaces Nordenfelt's (seemingly) empty set of preferences and society-relative vital goals with a human species-wide conception of basic vital goals, or 'central human capabilities and functionings'. These central human capabilities come out of the capabilities approach (CA) now familiar in political philosophy and economics, and particularly reflect the work of Martha Nussbaum. As a result, the health of an individual should be understood as the ability to achieve a basic cluster of beings and doings-or having the overarching capability, a meta-capability, to achieve a set of central or vital inter-related capabilities and functionings.

Introduction : philosophy and public health / Alex Broadbent and Sridhar Venkatapuram -- The public in public health / John Coggon -- Medicine and public health / Daniel Steel -- Groups and individuals / Stephen John -- Concepts of health and disease in public health / Benjamin Smart -- Public health and ethics / Sridhar Venkatapuram -- The philosophical implications of fundamental cause theory / Daniel Goldberg -- Causal pluralism and public health / Federica Russo -- External validity and public health / Chad Harris -- Explanation in public health / Olaf Dammann -- Evidence-based medicine and public health / Mathew Mercuri and Ross E. G. Upshur -- Profiling in public health / winnie ma -- big data and public health / Derek W. Braverman -- Machine learning and public health : philosophical issues / Thomas Grote and Alex Broadbent -- Capabilities, human flourishing, and the health gap / Michael Marmot -- Measuring social position in health inequality research / Mel Bartley -- Race and racism in public health / Diamond-Hunter -- Sex and gender blind spots and biases in health research / Avni Amin, Lavanya Vijayasingham, and Jacqui Stevenson -- Global health indicators and data : communicative signs and sites of contest / Sara L. M. Davis -- Securitization and health / Jeremy Youde -- Health, place and justice : a philosophical appraisal of promoting equity in Covid-19 through disadvantage indices / Samantha Fritz, Tuhina Srivastava, Emily Sadecki, and Harald Schmidt -- Social justice and public health / Maxwell J. Smith -- Health, healthcare, and public health as objects of (human) rights / Michael Da Silva -- Disability justice and public health / Agn̈s Berthelot-Raffard -- Ageing and justice in health : a conceptual map toward a unified view / Kebadu Mekonnen Gebremariam and Ritu Sadana -- Philosophical issues in cancer and public health / Anya Plutynski -- Public health, human rights, and philosophy / Kristen Hessler.