Health Disparities, Equity, and Social Justice

Health disparities are group differences in health conditions associated with systemic level factors, including by socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, age, gender, or geographical location. These are health statuses that persist over time, largely associated with (dis)advantage and lack of equity and social justice in how a health system operates. This chapter first considers the professional and legal definitions of health disparities, differentiating between the concept of health disparities and health equity. Next, the chapter outlines health and functioning applying the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (WHO-ICF, 2001), a guiding international standard on health statuses. The chapter then discusses how health disparities operate in people’s activities of daily living, and their participation, taking into account their life contexts as by their lived environments and personal factors. With this background, the chapter then considers approaches to addressing health disparities for health equity and social justice, including life course approaches, collaborative multidisciplinary team and community health approaches, health equity-focused policies and practices, and human right and social justice approaches. It should be apparent that solutions to health disparities go beyond the capacity of just the healthcare industry to aim for health social justice by which health well is a basic human right. Finally, the chapter reviews the issues for research and other forms of scholarship for addressing health disparities with a particular focus on heath in-all for all approaches for sustainable health equity.