Health Justice Through the Lens of Power

Abstract

AbstractHealth justice is an aspirational north star for scholars, practitioners, and anyone who refuses to accept the status quo of profound inequity. But what does health justice mean? How ought we conceptualize it? There is no correct answer to these questions, but any robust rendering of health justice must account for power and politics. This article posits that the path to health justice requires political struggle taking (at least) two forms: (1) building power and (2) breaking power. Building power for health justice means cultivating the political capacity of people who are disproportionately harmed by health inequity, and who therefore have the most at stake. Breaking power involves weakening and destabilizing the economic and political forces that perpetuate health inequity. By surfacing and elaborating these crucial modes of political struggle, this article points to a way forward for achieving health justice.