Health Inequities in Canada—Intersectional Frameworks and Practices

Unequal access to health care is a problem in Canada much studied by
journalists, academics, and policy makers. There is a growing
recognition that existing theories on, and approaches to, health
inequities are limited in their ability to capture how these inequities
are produced through changing, co-constituted, and intersecting effects
of multiple forms of oppression.

Intersectionality offers itself as a research paradigm capturing the
complexities of illness and care, and this volume brings together
Canadian activists, community-based researchers, and scholars from a
range of disciplines to apply interpretations of intersectionality to
cases in Indigenous health, mental health, migration health, community
health, and organizational governance. By addressing specific health
issues including cardiovascular disease, dementia, post-traumatic
stress disorder, diabetes, and violence, this book advances
methodological applications of intersectionality in health research,
policy, and practice. The authors ultimately reveal how multiple
variables are influencing health and healing in Canada – not
simply race, class, and gender but also age, religion, geography and
place, and the state of the economy.

Most importantly, it demonstrates that health inequities cannot be
understood or addressed without the interrogation of power and diverse
social locations and structures that shape lives and experiences of
health.