Session: Moving towards more equitable systems in bioethics and healthcare
Disruptive Health
Thursday, October 12, 2023
9:45 AM – 11:00 AM ET
Location: Bristol (Third Floor)
In this paper I identify the phenomenon “disruptive health” and assess its normative implications. Disruptive health is the health gained by a population through the protective effects of social support. For example, research shows that social support moderates the effects of discrimination on Black people’s mental health in the US. I call this “disruptive health” because it disrupts some of the negative impact of social injustice on health. After explaining the phenomenon, I describe three of its ethical implications. One, it helps to demonstrate that a focus on “health outcomes” is insufficient for determining health inequity; if the impact of social injustice is mitigated by people who experience marginalization, then some health outcomes do not reflect the full impact of social injustice on their health. Furthermore, the burden of mitigating those effects is also not reflected through the measurement of health outcomes. Two, disruptive health highlights additional problems with conceptions of health equity that centralize individual responsibility for health. Three, disruptive health can be a useful addition to creating better narratives about health agency. Emphasizing the impact of social injustice on health can create overly simplified narratives about people experiencing marginalization, often victimizing them. Importantly, disruptive health demonstrates the ways in which they exercise agency even within the confines of injustice. Ultimately, I show how the notion of disruptive health has implications for how to conceive of health equity and its underlying foundation in social justice.