Class, Health, and Justice

Global health and justice.

In Australia, Japan, Sweden, and Switzerland, the average life expectancy is now greater than 80 years. But in Angola, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe, the average life expectancy is less than 40 years. The situation is even worse than these statistics suggest because average figures tend to mask inequalities within countries. What are we to make of a world with such inequal health prospects...

Justice, health, and healthcare.

Healthcare (including public health) is special because it protects normal functioning, which in turn protects the range of opportunities open to individuals. I extend this account in two ways. First, since the distribution of goods other than healthcare affect population health and its distribution, I claim that Rawls's principles of justice describe a fair distribution of the social determina...

Health and social justice.

Theories of social justice applied to health care have typically focused on justifying health care (medicine and public health) as a special social good. Rationalizing greater equality in health care is typically the point of departure for most approaches to medical ethics, even those that include health assessment. In general, these approaches have paid relatively little attention to universal...

Mental Health and Criminal Justice

Justice and Global Health Research

One of the most interesting and knotty puzzles in global health justice can be found in Margaret Whitehead’s decision tree for determining which health inequalities across human beings demand a social response. Whitehead argued that the subset of health inequalities that are avoidable, unnecessary, and unfair or unjust are health “inequities” (Whitehead 1990). While inequalities are value-free ...