A new special problem of American psychologist aims to inspire psychologists to think broadly and boldly about research, policies, practices, and prevention efforts intended to dismantle health inequities. Guest editors Idia Binitie Thurston, Margarita Alegría, Kristina B. Hood, Gregory E. Miller, Leo Wilton, and Kisha B. Holden share key takeaways about the role of psychologists in promoting health equity.
What is the special issue about?
The 14 articles in the special issue explore why psychologists are well-positioned, well-trained, and needed to advocate for health equity through innovative partnerships and care delivery models. They show psychologists how to engage and maintain a focus on health equity in advocacy, research, education, training, and practice efforts. Psychologists and readers are invited to reinvent their existing and future work with a health equity lens. More broadly, the special issue brings together articles on four main themes: (a) integration of care, (b) intersections of social factors and health determinants, (c) intersecting social systems, and (d ) advocacy for health equity.
What is the significance of the problem?
Health equity—the assurance that everyone should have a fair and equitable chance at achieving the best health—has long eluded American society. The special issue highlights the need for new conceptual models to guide research, education, and practice; the importance of engaging in transdisciplinary partnerships; and the urgency of collaborating with community members in cross-systemic alliances to change the social drivers of health, structural racism, and contextual risks that perpetuate health inequities. The stunning disproportionality of the COVID-19 response may have finally shocked psychologists and the country into recognizing the unequal burden of suffering and the way health in American society is stratified along race, class social, location, gender, sexuality, abilities and other salient elements. identity traits.
For this special issue of American psychologist, we have selected articles that explore what psychologists can do to understand and mitigate these inequalities. We sought to deepen understanding and inspire the development of innovative strategies that psychologists can use to identify and mitigate health inequities. We highlighted gaps in psychological science, progress in developing a conceptual framework, and new methodological approaches that must be implemented to achieve health equity. Psychologists are uniquely positioned to investigate the causes of inequities, develop health equity interventions, and advocate for related policy changes. However, as six researchers who have worked on health equity for many cumulative years in many different contexts, we believe that the voice and vision of the field have largely been absent from the broad national dialogue around these issues, in which doctors and social scientists from other disciplines participated. dominated.
Tell us about some key takeaways.
This special issue features new articles that examine the role of psychology in promoting health equity. Topics receiving particular attention include:
- integration of care: how individual and community health access, quality, literacy, shared decision-making, technology, telehealth and mHealth drive, sustain and can be leveraged to dismantle mental health inequities and physical
- intersections between social determinants of health: how structural forces, as reflected in policies and practices around debt, housing, the built environment, food and employment, act through psychological processes to initiate and maintain inequalities health matter
- Intersecting societal systems: how the criminal justice, immigration, environmental, and public health systems work through psychological processes to dehumanize communities and generate and maintain health inequities
- advocacy for health equity: how work with individuals, families, and communities in the field of psychology must be culturally competent when addressing structural inequalities on multiple levels
What are the practical implications of the articles presented in this issue?
- Overall, the articles provide innovative frameworks that enable psychologists to advocate for health equity in all of their work, providing a roadmap for how psychologists can advance health equity. We argue that all psychologists can be health equity specialists and show how to get there.
- To illustrate the gaps that psychologists can fill, several articles outline the roles that psychologists can play in interdisciplinary teams and new models that psychologists can implement to advance health equity in low-income settings. resources, patient-centered family medicine centers and rural settings.
- Other articles highlight how social factors and health determinants interact and generate health inequities in multi-level systems of oppression and within immigrant and migrant communities. The authors offer practical ways to use this knowledge to address trauma and structural violence resulting from social health factors.
- Strategies for how psychologists can effect change within intersecting societal systems are highlighted. Suggested strategies include concrete ways to engage in multi-level advocacy, workforce development, non-exploitative community partnerships, reducing hospital violence, implementing liberation psychology, solutions to climate change, therapeutic interventions as alternatives to policing and trauma reduction.
- Finally, a task force report outlines concrete steps psychologists can take to integrate health equity into research, practice, education, and advocacy.
This article is in the Health Psychology and Medicine topic area. See more articles in the Health psychology and medicine thematic area.
