Tackling Health Inequities through Public Health Practice ─ Theory to Action

Social justice has always been a core value driving public health. Today, much of the etiology of avoidable disease is rooted in inequitable social conditions brought on by disparities in wealth and power and reproduced through ongoing forms of oppression, exploitation, and marginalization.

Tackling Health Inequities raises questions and provides a starting point for health practitioners ready to reorient public health practice to address the fundamental causes of health inequities. This reorientation involves restructuring the organization, culture and daily work of public health. Tackling Health Inequities is meant to inspire readers to imagine or envision public health practice and their role in ways that question contemporary thinking and assumptions, as emerging trends, social conditions, and policies generate increasing inequities in health.

Richard Hofrichter is Senior Analyst, Health Equity for the National Association of County & City Health Officials.

Rajiv Bhatia is Director, Division of Occupational and Environmental Health at the San Francisco Department of Public Health as well as Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California at San Francisco