By Jennifer Cohen
Profit-motivated economic activity conflicts with the realization of population health and health justice.
To work toward health justice, we must recognize health as a function of (1) capitalist economic development processes, including (2) gendered and racialized divisions of labor. Together, these heighten the contradiction between the profit motive and the domestic and global requirements of public health. This contradiction is also evident in the ways (3) markets can misallocate inputs to health (e.g., hand sanitizer, personal protective equipment for medical practitioners) and how most people obtain health (e.g., as “consumers”).