scholarly journals The Intersectionality Toolbox: A Resource for Teaching and Applying an Intersectional Lens in Public Health

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie J. Sabik
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Disparities ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Student Feedback ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
The Social ◽  
Race Ethnicity

Intersectionality is a theoretical framework that was developed to address the ways in which people's experiences are shaped based on their intersecting social identities (e. g., race/ethnicity, gender, class, age, etc.). This approach focuses on the importance of considering power, privilege, and social structures in relation to people's access to resources, experiences of discrimination, and interpersonal interactions. An intersectional approach in public health is critical for research and teaching to illuminate health disparities and the underlying structures that create and maintain disparities. While scholars have focused primarily on how to integrate an intersectional perspective into research methods, there is a need for a clear framework for applying intersectionality effectively in public health teaching. The Intersectionality Toolbox (ITB) is a framework developed from a variety of interdisciplinary resources designed to apply an intersectional perspective to public health issues. This article describes the Intersectionality Toolbox and details how it can be utilized in public health classes. Following a course where the ITB was implemented, student feedback was sought to determine the appropriateness and effectiveness of the design, and metrics were aligned with the learning outcomes. The ITB was refined and retained to integrate into courses and assignments focused on teaching about the intersecting nature of the social determinants of health.

Prevention of mental disorder in childhood and other public health issues

2012 ◽  
pp. 1606-1611
Author(s):  
Rhoshel Lenroot
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Mental Health Disorders ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Disorders ◽  
Neuroimaging Genetics

Enormous progress has been made in recognizing the scope of mental health problems for children around the world, and in developing the theoretical framework needed to address decreasing this burden in a systematic fashion. Technological advances in neuroimaging, genetics, and computational biology are providing the tools to start describing the biological processes underlying the complex course of development, and have renewed appreciation of the role of the environment in determining how a genetic heritage is expressed. However, rapid technological change is also altering the environment of children and their families at an unprecedented rate, and what kinds of challenges to public health these changes may present is not yet fully understood. What is becoming clear is that as technological advances increase the range of available health care treatments, along with the potential cost, the choices for societies between spending limited resources on treatment or prevention will have to become increasingly deliberate. A substantial body of work has demonstrated that prevention in mental health can be effective, but those who would benefit the most from preventive interventions are often not those with the political or economic resources to make them a priority. While the potential interventions to prevent mental health disorders in children are constrained by the knowledge and resources available, what is actually done depends upon the social and political values of individual communities and nations. It is to be hoped that as our understanding of these disorders grows, public policies to prevent the development of mental health disorders in children will become as commonplace a responsibility for modern societies as the provision of clean drinking water.

Intersectional Understandings of Inequality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aída Hurtado
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
Identity Theory ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Research And Policy ◽  
Economic Inequalities ◽  
Borderlands Theory

To address the increase in social and economic inequalities requires complex paradigms that take into account multiple sources of oppression. This chapter proposes the concept of intersectionality elaborated through social identity theory and borderlands theory as a potential avenue for research and policy to speak to and solve multiple sources of disadvantage. The multiple sources of inequality produce intersectional identities as embodied in the social identities constituted by the master statuses of sexuality, gender, class, race, ethnicity, and physical ableness. By applying intersectionality to inequality one can examine both intersections of disadvantage (e.g., being poor and of Color) or intersections of both of disadvantage and privilege (e.g., being male and of Color). Intersectionality also permits the study of privilege when advantaged social identities are problematized. I conclude with reviewing the possible ways of empirically studying intersectionality and the advantages in applying it to the understanding of social and economic inequalities.

Sexual and Gender Minorities, Public Health, and Ethics

2019 ◽  
pp. 231-244
Author(s):  
Tonya Littlejohn ◽  
Tonia Poteat ◽  
Chris Beyrer
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Health Surveillance ◽  
Health Surveillance ◽  
Health Needs ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Sexual And Gender Minorities ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Gender Minorities ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender

Sexual and gender minorities (LGBT persons) are more visible and mobilized than ever. In some countries, that visibility and activism have contributed to the advancement of sexual and gender rights. Nevertheless, and despite those gains, stigma, discrimination, and criminalization of these populations persist and have impeded efforts to address their public health needs. As a result, sexual and gender minorities continue to experience a range of health disparities, and overall face a disproportionately high burden of mental health issues, HIV/AIDS, and other illnesses. This chapter explores core ethical challenges and debates that impact health promotion and prevention efforts with sexual and gender minorities, with a focus on issues arising in public health surveillance and interventions, and on understanding the social and political context that impacts the lived reality of sexual and gender minorities.

scholarly journals ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSIGHTS INTO THE USE OF RACE/ETHNICITY TO EXPLORE GENETIC CONTRIBUTIONS TO DISPARITIES IN HEALTH

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON M. OUTRAM ◽  
GEORGE T. H. ELLISON
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Genetic Research ◽  
Editorial Staff ◽  
Response To Treatment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analytical Variable ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Genetic Contributions

Anthropological insights into the use of race/ethnicity to explore genetic contributions to disparities in health were developed using in-depth qualitative interviews with editorial staff from nineteen genetics journals, focusing on the methodological and conceptual mechanisms required to make race/ethnicity a genetic variable. As such, these analyses explore how and why race/ethnicity comes to be used in the context of genetic research, set against the background of continuing critiques from anthropology and related human sciences that focus on the social construction, structural correlates and limited genetic validity of racial/ethnic categories. The analyses demonstrate how these critiques have failed to engage geneticists, and how geneticists use a range of essentially cultural devices to protect and separate their use of race/ethnicity as a genetic construct from its use as a societal and social science resource. Given its multidisciplinary, biosocial nature and the cultural gaze of its ethnographic methodologies, anthropology is well placed to explore the cultural separation of science and society, and of natural and social science disciplines. Anthropological insights into the use of race/ethnicity to explore disparities in health suggest that moving beyond genetic explanations of innate difference might benefit from a more even-handed critique of how both the natural and social sciences tend to essentialize selective elements of race/ethnicity. Drawing on the example of HIV/AIDS, this paper demonstrates how public health has been undermined by the use of race/ethnicity as an analytical variable, both as a cipher for innate genetic differences in susceptibility and response to treatment, and in its use to identify ‘core groups’ at greater risk of becoming infected and infecting others. Clearly, a tendency for biological reductionism can place many biomedical issues beyond the scope of public health interventions, while socio-cultural essentialization has tended to stigmatize ‘unhealthy behaviours’ and the communities where these are more prevalent.

scholarly journals Smoke gets in your eyes: what is sociological about cigarettes?

2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 882-897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donncha Marron
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Cigarette Smoking ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Social Distribution

Contemporary public health approaches increasingly draw attention to the unequal social distribution of cigarette smoking. In contrast, critical accounts emphasize the importance of smokers’ situated agency, the relevance of embodiment and how public health measures against smoking potentially play upon and exacerbate social divisions and inequality. Nevertheless, if the social context of cigarettes is worthy of such attention, and sociology lays a distinct claim to understanding the social, we need to articulate a distinct, positive and systematic claim for smoking as an object of sociological enquiry. This article attempts to address this by situating smoking across three main dimensions of sociological thinking: history and social change; individual agency and experience; and social structures and power. It locates the emergence and development of cigarettes in everyday life within the project of modernity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It goes on to assess the habituated, temporal and experiential aspects of individual smoking practices in everyday lifeworlds. Finally, it argues that smoking, while distributed in important ways by social class, also works relationally to render and inscribe it.

An Overview of Health Disparities in the Context of Public Health Ethics

2019 ◽  
pp. 257-265
Author(s):  
Andrew W. Siegel
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Health Disparities ◽  
Health Inequity ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject

Health disparities have increasingly become an important area of examination for public health ethics. This chapter provides an overview of the ethics of health disparities, one of the dedicated sections of The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics. It begins with background on health disparities and socioeconomic status, including a brief summary of some of the seminal research on the subject. It then provides an overview of the chapters in this section of the handbook, which address (1) the social determinants of health and the ethics and social justice arguments for reducing health disparities, (2) racial and ethnic health disparities, (3) some conflicts that arise between reducing health disparities and advancing population health, and (4) ethical considerations in the measurement of health inequity.

Fostering Art and Cultural Entrepreneurship in Underserved Communities: A Case of Newark, NJ

2021 ◽  
pp. 0739456X2110358
Author(s):  
Qingfang Wang ◽  
Lyneir Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Business Owners ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Market Opportunity ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Underrepresented Groups ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Social ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Cultural Entrepreneurship

Policymakers worldwide have invested in art and cultural industries (ACIs) as important vehicles for economic development. However, the issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and inequality have not been sufficiently addressed. This study investigates the factors that enable or constrain art and cultural entrepreneurship (ACE) in Newark, NJ. The findings suggest that a sense of place and the social identities of diverse business owners significantly impact the process of launching and operating creative businesses. Insufficient market opportunity, lack of resources in the community, and uneven distribution of wealth across racial groups are among the biggest challenges they face. Despite these challenges, these artist-entrepreneurs have proactively worked as both business owners and art-industrial gatekeepers to promote themselves and other underrepresented groups in the marketplace. The study also highlights universities’ role in the regional entrepreneurship ecosystem in promoting ACIs. It calls for policy and practices fostering minority entrepreneurship in ACIs, bringing artists to the core of entrepreneurship and development strategies in these communities.

Aging and Chronic Illness in Language and Sexuality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Peel ◽  
Sonja J. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Health ◽  
Type 2 Diabetes ◽  
Chronic Illness ◽  
Older People ◽  
Chronic Conditions ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
The Social

An aging demographic in Western societies as well as globally has made public health issues, such as dementia, subject to hyperbolic metaphor such as “tsunami” and “time bomb.” This chapter reviews the state of knowledge regarding language, sexualities, aging, and chronic illness. In particular, the discussion focuses on discursive research from across the social sciences that furthers understandings of older people’s lives and experiences. The chapter highlights research that has focused on ageism and chronic conditions impacting older people (specifically, dementia and type 2 diabetes), including empirical research on these conditions, and on manifestations of heterosexism and heteronormativity in these contexts. Using illustrative examples that emphasize the intersection of discourse and issues that relate to aging, the chapter foregrounds this area as an important element of language and sexuality scholarship. Last, future directions for the development of research focusing on these topics are indicated.

Medical stratification in Vietnam

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Lincoln
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Disparities ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Disease Outbreak ◽  
Market Transition ◽  
Government Employees ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
The Social

Market transition in Vietnam is known to have fueled health disparities, but racialized and nationality-linked aspects of the country’s medical stratification have received less attention, despite the growing presence of foreigners using the health system. Field experiences reveal the country’s increasing health and medical inequity – legible in the social, linguistic, economic, and physical distinctions between public health stations staffed by government employees and the private clinics serving mostly expatriates. Ethnographic interviews and experiences of receiving care in both public and private facilities inform my argument that the privatization of Vietnam’s health sector produces racialized, classed, and citizenship-linked forms of medical profit, privilege, segregation, and risk – trends visible both in recent debates over US health policy and recent episodes of pandemic disease outbreak.

scholarly journals Persisting problems related to race and ethnicity in public health and epidemiology research

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Claude Moubarac
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Disparities ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Human Diversity ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Inappropriate Use ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Race And Health ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Epidemiology And Public Health

A recent and comprehensive review of the use of race and ethnicity in research that address health disparities in epidemiology and public health is provided. First it is described the theoretical basis upon which race and ethnicity differ drawing from previous work in anthropology, social science and public health. Second, it is presented a review of 280 articles published in high impacts factor journals in regards to public health and epidemiology from 2009-2011. An analytical grid enabled the examination of conceptual, theoretical and methodological questions related to the use of both concepts. The majority of articles reviewed were grounded in a theoretical framework and provided interpretations from various models. However, key problems identified include a) a failure from researchers to differentiate between the concepts of race and ethnicity; b) an inappropriate use of racial categories to ascribe ethnicity; c) a lack of transparency in the methods used to assess both concepts; and d) failure to address limits associated with the construction of racial or ethnic taxonomies and their use. In conclusion, future studies examining health disparities should clearly establish the distinction between race and ethnicity, develop theoretically driven research and address specific questions about the relationships between race, ethnicity and health. One argue that one way to think about ethnicity, race and health is to dichotomize research into two sets of questions about the relationship between human diversity and health.

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