Health Equity & Social Justice Minor

Health equity involves identifying the root causes of the uneven distribution of health-related burdens and outcomes. Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal rights and opportunities including access to and control over the basic material and non-material resources that sustain and promote health at a high level of satisfaction. In the U.S. and worldwide there are health inequities that are avoidable, unnecessary, and unjust. These inequities are the result of policies and practices that create an unequal distribution of money, power, and resources among communities based on but not limited to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and place. In order to ensure that communities have the opportunity to attain and promote health at a high-level of satisfaction we must address the social determinants of health in order to achieve health equity. Future health care practitioners and researchers interested in this goal require training in the social and behavioral sciences in order to critically examine the causes and consequences of health inequities. Taken together, a selection of courses will teach students to identify and critically evaluate measures, causes, and consequences of health disparities, which will prepare a new generation of leaders to make significant changes in the delivery of health care to improve health equity for local and global populations.