Background
Health outcomes and inequalities are shaped by political processes, yet the vocabulary used to describe this relationship—“health politics,” “politics of health,” “politics of public health,” “politics of health policy,” and “political determinants of health” (PDoH)—is applied inconsistently and has not been systematically examined.
Objectives
To map how “politics” is conceptualized when these focal terms are used across the health and social science literature, and to clarify how PDoH relates to the broader health-politics vocabulary.
Methods
In this scoping review, we searched Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed for articles published between 1976 and 2025 and conducted a term-in-use analysis of 457 included records (329 using politics-of-X terms; 128 using PDoH). Using directed qualitative content analysis, two independent coders classified the dominant conceptualization of each focal term into seven categories (policy process; governance and accountability; interest group politics; critical power analysis; social movements; political economy and welfare state; and ethics and normative reasoning), with almost perfect inter-rater agreement (screening κ = 0.94; primary-category κ = 0.90).
Results
Conceptual usage was dominated by policy process (31.3%) and critical power analysis (26.9%), which together accounted for 58.2% of records, with the remaining categories comparatively sparse. The politics-of-X and PDoH corpora shared this conceptual core in nearly equal proportion (each ≈ 58%) but differed in emphasis: PDoH was more often framed through critical power analysis and structurally oriented categories (political economy, governance), whereas politics-of-X terms more often invoked actor- and process-centered framings. Multiple correspondence analysis recovered two interpretive axes, contrasting structural/critical with agential/process usage and conceptual with applied usage.
Conclusions
“Health politics” operates not as a single bounded concept but as a label organized around two loosely connected conceptual traditions—an applied, process-centered one and a critical, structurally oriented one—while PDoH sits within this structure as a critically and structurally inflected specialization rather than a departure from it. The resulting mid-range typology offers a shared vocabulary for more cumulative research on the political drivers of health.

Background
The post–World War II institutional order that structured social protection and public health governance is under sustained strain, yet no coherent alternative has consolidated. Planetary, technological, and social transformations are simultaneously reshaping who lives, who receives care, and whose suffering is normalized. Political configurations are now more decisive for health and health equity than at any point in the postwar period.
Problem
Scholarship on health politics remains fragmented across disciplines, theoretically under-developed in its treatment of power relations, and methodologically limited in its capacity for causal inference. Existing journals either publish health politics research as a secondary concern within broader portfolios or lack the editorial infrastructure to integrate the theoretical and methodological traditions the field requires. No journal currently centres theories of power and institutions as applied to health.
Aim
To establish Health Politics as a dedicated, interdisciplinary journal for rigorous, policy-relevant research that explains how power, institutions, and political conflict shape health and health equity.
Approach
The journal bridges political science, political economy, political sociology, and public health. It is anchored in the political economy of health tradition while engaging theories of power, institutions, and political processes from across the social sciences. It combines methodological pluralism with a quantitative edge, emphasizing causal inference alongside qualitative depth and comparative analysis.
Illustrative cases
Four current examples demonstrate how politics shapes health under crisis conditions: the politicization of vaccination policy, war and humanitarian restrictions in Gaza, climate disaster response in Canada, and platform power and adolescent mental health in EU and United States. Each case reveals distinct political mechanisms through which power produces health consequences.
Contribution
A new scholarly home for power-aware, methodologically rigorous health research that fills a structural gap in the journal landscape and provides an interdisciplinary platform for the emerging field of health politics.

Citations

• Introducing Health Politics
  Haejoo Chung, Carles Muntaner
  Health Politics.2026; 1(1): e001.     CrossRef