Faith Based Health Justice

In Faith-Based Health Justice, a stellar assembly of scholars mines critical insights into the promotion of health justice across Christian and Islamic faith traditions and beyond. Contributors to the volume consider what health justice might mean today, if developed in accordance with faith traditions whose commandment to care for the poor, ill, and marginalized lies at the core of their theology. And what kind of transformation of both faith traditions and public policies would be needed in the face of the health justice challenges in our turbulent time? Contributors to the volume come from a wide range of backgrounds, and the result will be of interest to scholars and students in social ethics, development studies, global theology, interreligious studies, and global health as well as experts, practitioners, and policy-makers in health and development work.

"This book combines a religiously non-confessional approach to justice with health together with an analysis of the faith-based promotion of justice with health and focuses mainly on the time period beginning from the mid-1960s. Here "justice with health" means a particular reasonable conception of socio-political justice that includes health-related capabilities among its central components. The faith-based heritage in question is Protestant, especially Lutheran, Christianity. Drawing on some of the most prominent theories of justice from the past few decades, primarily those by John Rawls and Amartya Sen, the constructive part of the study defends a moderately structured account of reasonable justice identified through ten guidelines. Although these guidelines are first defended in terms of religiously non-confessional theories, it is argued that they could be properly supported by insights of faith as well. The guidelines--concerning the foundations, principles, and goals of justice--allow comparatively flexible variation across contexts. Yet they are intended to help achieve a firmer consensus in the promotion of health-related justice than the status quo among various responsible agencies usually indicates. A broad historical review of the Protestant promotion of social justice and health, from the Reformation era onwards, illuminates the importance of this faith-based heritage. Insights inspired by a holistic theology of human dignity, faith in freedom, a calling to serve one's neighbor, the two kingdoms doctrine, natural law theology, and advocacy for the sick and the poor have functioned as highly significant reasons to assume responsibilities for justice and health long before the era of secular welfare states and explicit programs for global health [...].".

In a world beset by serious and unconscionable health disparities, by dangerous contagions that can circle our globalized planet in hours, and by a bewildering confusion of health actors and systems, humankind needs a new vision, a new architecture, new coordination among renewed systems to ensure central health capabilities for all. Global Health Justice and Governance lays out the critical problems facing the world today and offers a new theory of justice and governance as a way to resolve these seemingly intractable issues. A fundamental responsibility of society is to ensure human flourishing. The central role that health plays in flourishing places a unique claim on our public institutions and resources, to ensure central health capabilities to reduce premature death and avoid preventable morbidities. Faced with staggering inequalities, imperiling epidemics, and inadequate systems, the world desperately needs a new global health architecture. Global Health Justice and Governance lays out this vision.

"This book turns to the wisdom of an older generation of Christian activists from all across Canada (including Quebec), in order to inspire a direction and model for future faith-based action for social and ecological justice. Written by Joe Gunn, a long-time leader within the Canadian justice ecumenical milieu, and current Executive Director of Citizens for Public Justice, the book promises to be a thoughtful and inspiring reflection based on interviews Joe will conduct with key Canadians from several ecumenical backgrounds. These are folks who have served as active models of social justice struggles across the nation over the years. While their witness, and that of many Christians, have contributed to the ending of apartheid, the partial cancellation of debts to poor countries, and the engagement in reconciliation and solidarity with Indigenous people, challenges remain: poverty, in Canada alone, continues to deprive families of abundant life, and achieving climate justice in a world addicted to oil appears daunting. The rationale behind the book is that it is important to evaluate 'what works' from varied perspectives in every era, as well as to know where we have been in order to discern how to proceed. This line of thinking then, is especially important now, since the call to justice is arguably greater today than it has been in the past. With the inclusion of at least one chapter reflection by a Millennial Christian activist on the wisdom of an older generation of Christian activists, this book can inform and inspire a newer generation of faith-based public justice activists today."--

Incarceration severely affects the health and wellbeing of women both during their incarceration and following release, further complicating the health disparities they already experience as a consequence of gender, race and social class. The scope of this international problem remains largely hidden from health professionals and policy makers. This book brings the issues into the light, with contributions from leading advocates, criminologists, feminists, nurses, physicians, public health professionals, social workers, sociologists and former prisoners.

The need for informed analyses of health policy is now greater than ever. The twelve essays in this volume show that public debates routinely bypass complex ethical, sociocultural, historical, and political questions about how we should address ideals of justice and equality in health care. Integrating perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, medicine, and public health, this volume illuminates the relationships between justice and health inequalities to enrich debates. Understanding Health Inequalities and Justice explores three questions: How do scholars approach relations between health inequalities and ideals of justice? When do justice considerations inform solutions to health inequalities, and how do specific health inequalities affect perceptions of injustice? And how can diverse scholarly approaches contribute to better health policy? From addressing patient agency in an inequitable health care environment to examining how scholars of social justice and health care amass evidence, this volume promotes a richer understanding of health and justice and how to achieve both. The contributors are Judith C. Barker, Paula Braveman, Paul Brodwin, Jami Suki Chang, Debra DeBruin, Leslie A. Dubbin, Sarah Horton, Carla C. Keirns, J. Paul Kelleher, Nicholas B. King, Eva Feder Kittay, Joan Liaschenko, Anne Drapkin Lyerly, Mary Faith Marshall, Carolyn Moxley Rouse, Jennifer Prah Ruger, and Janet K. Shim.

Building and expanding upon the prior edition of Essentials of Health Justice, the new second edition of this unparalleled text explores the historical, structural, and legal underpinnings of racial, ethnic, gender-based, and ableist inequities in health, and provides a framework for students to consider how and why health inequity is tied to the ways that laws are structured and enforced. Additionally, it offers analysis of potential solutions and posits how law may be used as a tool to remedy health injustice. Written for a wide, interdisciplinary audience of students and scholars in public health, medicine, and law, as well as other health professions, this accessible text discusses both the systems and policies that influence health and explores opportunities to advocate for legal and policy change by public health practitioners and policymakers, physicians, health care professionals, lawyers, and lay people.

This book presents important fields of research in public healthcare in India from an interdisciplinary and health systems perspectives. Discussing how the exchange of power between the health justice triad, viz., the State (judiciary as the arm of the State), legal and medical professions, and civil society, cumulatively shapes the outcomes of health justice for citizens, it provides insights into India’s juridico-legal processes and of seeking justice in healthcare. It critically assesses civil society’s counter-hegemonic role in bolstering justice in health care and examines the potential of transforming health care jurisprudence into health justice. Repositioning the social right to healthcare as integral to social citizenship and social justice, and opening avenues for inter-professional and interdisciplinary power discourse in public health policy research, the book is of interest to academics, practitioners, students, researchers, and the wide academic community working in public health care issues broadly.