Maximizing Community Voices to Address Health Inequities: How the Law Hinders and Helps.
نویسندگان
چکیده
This paper highlights the need to apply an equity lens when assessing the impact of preemption and related legal doctrines on community health. Community autonomy to set and pursue public health priorities is an essential part of achieving health equity. Unfortunately, the priorities of organized industry interest groups often conflict with health equity goals. These groups have a history of successfully using law to limit community autonomy to pursue public health measures, most notably through preemption and related legal doctrines. We examine this phenomenon using two examples. First, we look at dental association efforts to block the spread of dental therapists in Indian Country. Native dental therapists have been improving the oral health of native people in Alaska for over a decade; yet the national and state dental associations have sought with mixed success to leverage state and federal laws to hinder other tribal governments from utilizing these providers. We compare these efforts with a restaurant association-led movement to limit what municipal governments can do to address food-based health inequities, focusing on a "model" ALEC bill that started in Ohio. Finally, we discuss how municipalities and Tribes are fighting back and continuing to pursue health equity for their communities.
منابع مشابه
Inequities in the Freedom to Lead a Flourishing and Healthy Life: Time for a Progressive Social Protections Framework; Comment on “Inequities in the Freedom to Lead a Flourishing and Healthy Life: Issues for Healthy Public Policy”
Evidence now shows that the key drivers of poor health are social factors, such as education, employment, housing and urban environments. Variations in these social factors—or the conditions in which we live our lives—have lead to a growth in health inequalities within and between countries. One of the key challenges facing those concerned with health equity is how to effect change across the b...
متن کاملWill Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Lead to the Freedom to Lead Flourishing and Healthy Lives?; Comment on “Inequities in the Freedom to Lead a Flourishing and Healthy Life: Issues for Healthy Public Policy”
The focus on public policy and health equity is discussed in reference to the current global health policy discussion on Universal Health Coverage (UHC). This initiative has strong commitment from the leadership of the international organizations involved, but a lack of policy clarity outside of the health financing component may limit the initiative’s impact on health inequity. In order to add...
متن کاملWe Need Action on Social Determinants of Health – but Do We Want It, too?; Comment on “Understanding the Role of Public Administration in Implementing Action on the Social Determinants of Health and Health Inequities”
Recently a number of calls have been made to mobilise the arsenal of political science insights to investigate – and point to improvements in – the social determinants of health (SDH), and health equity. Recently, in this journal, such a rallying appeal was made for the field of public administration. This commentary argues that, although scholarly potential should justifiably be redirected to ...
متن کاملReducing Health Inequities Through Intersectoral Action: Balancing Equity in Health With Equity for Other Social Goods
Significant attention has been devoted to developing intersectoral strategies to reduce health inequities; however, these strategies have largely neglected to consider how equity in health ought to be weighted and balanced with the pursuit of equity for other social goods (eg, education equity). Research in this domain is crucial, as the health sector’s pursuit of health equity may be at odds w...
متن کاملUnderstanding the Role of Public Administration in Implementing Action on the Social Determinants of Health and Health Inequities
Many of the societal level factors that affect health – the ‘social determinants of health (SDH)’ – exist outside the health sector, across diverse portfolios of government, and other major institutions including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the private sector. This has created growing interest in how to create and implement public policies which will drive better and fairer health...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید
ثبت ناماگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید
ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- The Journal of law, medicine & ethics : a journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics
دوره 45 1_suppl شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2017