Medical Activism and Environmental Health

Abstract

In the past decade, an environmental health movement has developed, and a number of medical social movement organizations (MSMOs) participate in efforts to promote sustainability and protect the environment. Physicians have organized as part of the larger peace and social justice movements since the mid-1800s. While these larger movements are the subjects of substantial historical and sociological research, there is no scholarship about contemporary MSMOs. In particular, contributions from such scholarship are noticeably absent in discussions of the current crisis of medical professionalism. Physicians and their medical organizations have limited understandings of social movements, activist roles, and medicine, as the profession has not found solidarity with other classes and groups in pursuit of environmental health, human rights, or universal access to health care. Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Human Rights, and Physicians for a National Health Program are important exceptions.