Contents:
Because of inequitable access to care and other health-promoting resources, these populations are often sicker when they do find a source of care and incur higher medical costs.
This discrimination and inequity undermines the social and community fabric that is so vital to public health, narrowing opportunity, disrupting families and social cohesion, and preventing civic participation. Since , about half of the states have passed new laws making it more difficult for voters to access the ballot box.
Name and address racism. Acknowledge racism as a system of structured inequity and not an individual character flaw. Name racism as a determining force in the distribution of the social determinants of health and equity. Identify the structures, policies, practices, norms and values in which racism may be operating.
Start a conversation about health equity within your agency or organization. Foster an open and honest dialogue within your agency and ideally with your community partners about historical injustices and present-day racism, bias and inequity and how they contribute to disparate health outcomes. Is Inequality Making Us Sick? Promote a health-in-all-policies approach and ensure an equity lens. Seek partnerships across sectors such as transportation, housing, education and law enforcement. Work with these partners to ensure that health and equity are embedded in their decision-making process.
All of these sectors and many more have a role in creating the conditions that enable all people and communities to attain and sustain good health.
Demand the fair allocation of community resources. Health and Human Flourishing 3. Justice, Capability, and Health Policy 5. Political and Moral Legitimacy: Professor Ruger has authored numerous theoretical and empirical studies on the equity and efficiency of health system access, financing, resource allocation, policy reform, and social determinants of health. These contributions are unified by an overarching interest in equity and disparities in health and health care, focusing on vulnerable and impoverished populations nationally and globally.
By producing a book of such richness concerning a major area of human agency and policy, Jennifer Prah Ruger has substantially advanced the reach of public reasoning, not just about health care, but about social justice in general. This gem of a book is destined to push forward current debates about health care reform and its theoretical foundations.
In this column I will discuss the problems with the current popular definition of health as the absence of disease and suggest an alternate definition that draws on recent work in social justice. Those of us who work in hospitals are familiar with the outpouring of often costly interventions in an effort to restore a patient to disease-free or stable status. Her HCP is constructed precisely in order to demonstrate what it would mean for policy and in practice to take capabilities earnestly in health policy debates With its theoretically sophisticated and realistic policy analysis, this work will be an important read for ethicists, students of health policy, and policy makers. Measuring disparities in health:
It will more than contribute to this field of investigation; it will be a defining moment. Newhouse , John D. Health and Social Justice is an important book not just as a guide to current debates, but for understanding how to navigate future challenges in the rapidly evolving environment of health policy in the United States and other nations. Caplan Chair of Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania.
We commend Ruger's excellent book. Ruger has built 'brick by brick' a serious, provocative comprehensive defense of a progressive, social justice perspective on health and healthcare.
Ruger's 'health capability paradigm' builds upon Aristotle's theory of 'human flourishing' with Those readers with an interest in law will find Professor Ruger's cogent analysis of and respectful counterargument to Professor Eugene Volokh's idea of a 'right to medical self-defense' particularly provocative Ruger's central health capabilities Ruger presses the strengths of her approach, but wisely recognizes its limits Readers will benefit from the impressive interdisciplinary nature of Ruger's analysis.
The range of her work cuts easily across political philosophy, political science, economics, law, public health, and medical ethics. With its theoretically sophisticated and realistic policy analysis, this work will be an important read for ethicists, students of health policy, and policy makers.
Ruger proposes a bold and expansive theory Such a contribution is just what the emerging field of health and social justice scholarship needs. Her HCP is constructed precisely in order to demonstrate what it would mean for policy and in practice to take capabilities earnestly in health policy debates Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Academic Skip to main content.