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When administering healthcare or combating epidemics, there's often an unaddressed social factor. Far more often, the focus remains on the scientific and biological aspects of the disease without delving into the social circumstances surrounding its prevalence. Healthcare typically narrows the scope to just medical intervention, instead of looking at the overarching conditions. Farmer and his colleagues give several examples of successful bio-social interventions; these methods allow physicians and healthcare workers to successfully treat patients in all aspects of the disease. Moreover, they contend that treating epidemics in this way helps to prevent the manifestation of social inequalities in healthcare.

1) "On an individual level, disagreements over treatment can arise when there are competing ideas about the cause and most appropriate treatment of disease. The weak and sometimes nonfunctioning health systems that often characterize complex security environments can compound these challenges and contribute to a milieu of mistrust that sets the stage for violence against health workers, facilities and transportation"

2) "There are also often inconsistencies in the categories used to describe perpetrators e e.g. terrorist, state actors, non-state actor e and these categories have legal ramifications under both International Humanitarian Law and in national legal frameworks. Although a standardizing of terminology and scope of study would be welcome, this has proven difficult."

3) "Although violence directly affecting health service delivery in complex security environments has received a great deal of media attention, there is very little publically available research, particularly peer-reviewed, original research. Only thirty-eight articles met the original search criteria outlined in the methods section, of which only eleven contained original research; a further citation search yielded another four original research articles."

The main argument is supported primarily through interview segments with displaced residents from New Orleans, some of whom had returned to the city and some who had not yet been able to go home. The article also supplied descriptions of the government programs and security teams that were assigned to protect the city, which supported the claims that the government failed to properly support survivors. Finally the article included statistics as to the conditions of the communities after several years and the percent of the population that had returned, rebuilt, or was still living in trailers or temporary housing.