View on Namche Bazar, Khumbu district, Himalayas, Nepal.

Intersectionality, Indigeneity, and Disability Climate Justice in Nepal

By Pratima Gurung, Penelope J.S. Stein, and Michael Ashley Stein

The climate crisis disproportionately impacts marginalized populations experiencing multilayered   and intersecting oppression, such as Indigenous Peoples with disabilities. To achieve climate justice, it is imperative to understand how multiple layers of oppression — arising from forces that include ableism, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism — interact and cause distinctive forms of multiple and intersectional discrimination. Only by understanding these forces can we develop effective, inclusive climate solutions.

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Oil refineries polluting carbon and cancer causing smoke stacks climate change and power plants in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Understanding Climate and Disability Justice: Mitigating Structural Barriers to the Right to Health

By Cynthia Golembeski, Ans Irfan, Michael Méndez, Amite Dominick, Rasheera Dopson, and Julie Skarha

People with disabilities — one of the most climate vulnerable groups — are often overlooked before, during, and in the aftermath of disasters.

Structural competency, which accounts for systemic “level determinants, biases, inequities, and blind spots,” is important to mitigating environmental racism and ableism in climate change and disaster policy. To achieve such intersectional approaches, the social determinants of health provide a useful framework. It explains how conditions, forces, and systems, including poverty, discrimination, underlying health disparities, and governance, not only shape daily life but also  vulnerability to climate-induced disasters (Figure 1). Decreasing vulnerability requires understanding and addressing upstream root causes of health inequities.

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WASHINGTON, DC - OCT. 8, 2019: Rally for LGBTQ rights outside Supreme Court as Justices hear oral arguments in three cases dealing with discrimination in the workplace because of sexual orientation.

LGBTQ Health Equity and Health Justice

By Heather Walter-McCabe

LGBTQ communities experience health inequities compared to heterosexual and cisgender peers. The health justice framework allows advocates to move the work upstream to the root causes of the problems, rather than placing a band-aid on the resultant consequences once the harm is caused.

It is not enough to provide individual treatment for the harm caused by stigma and bias. Health justice is a crucial means of ensuring that health care is equitable and that impacted communities are involved in policy and system advocacy.

The health justice framework, with its emphasis on community involvement in structural and governmental responses to systems-level transformation, must guide work in the area of LGBTQ health equity.

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A protester holds a sign with a quote that reads: "Pf all the forms of inequality injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."

Structural Racism, Social Determinants, and the Contested Scope of Public Health Law

By Lindsay F. Wiley

For centuries, public health advocates have understood that our health is shaped by the conditions in which we live and work — conditions public health researchers now refer to as the social determinants of health. Law itself is a social determinant of health. Structural racism and other forms of socioeconomic subordination, which are embedded in our laws and public and private policies, are social determinants of health.

Unfortunately, these statements are not uncontroversial. Commentators have debated whether structural racism and other forms of subordination are social determinants of health, and whether dismantling these forms of subordination is within the legitimate scope of public health law and policy. Critiques run along at least three main lines—semantic, civil libertarian, and progressive.

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