Public Policy Analysis to Redress Urban Environmental Health Inequities

Public policies may not have been designed to disadvantage certain populations, but the effects of some policies create unintended health inequities. The nature of community health nurses’ daily work provides a privileged position to witness the lived experiences and effects of policy-produced social and health inequities. This privileged position requires policy competence including analytical skills to connect lived experiences to public policy. The purpose of this article is to present an example of an urban ethnography that explicates inequity-producing effects of public policy and is intended to inform necessary policy changes. This study sheds light on how issues of childcare, housing, nutrition, and urban infrastructure in the context of poverty are fundamental to the larger issues of environmental health. This policy analysis documents how the Day Care Act of Nova Scotia, Canada explicates patriarchal and neoliberal gender and class assumptions that have implications for mothers’ health decisions.