Social Injustice and Public Health

Order Instructions

One might read this week’s assignment in Social Injustice and Public Health (Chapters 22-26) and conclude that policy, in the sense of legislation, is not necessarily the most effective lever for advancing more just outcomes in the health sphere. Instead, one might conclude that the communitarian/social approaches described in Chapter 24, or the education-based approaches discussed in Chapter 25, are more effective.

How do you think about this, particularly given what you’ve seen the last several weeks regarding the roles of advocacy groups, opposition groups, and bipartisan coalitions (or the lack thereof) in the health policy sphere? Can progress on a topic such as public health take place in the absence of a core policy tool like legislation?