Health Inequities in Canada

by Hankivsky, Olena; de Leeuw, Sarah (CON); Lee, Jo-Anne (CON); Vissandjee, Bilkis (CON); Khanlou, Nazilla (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780774819763
• ISBN10: 0774819766
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-01-25
• Publisher: Univ of British Columbia Pr

Summary

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.