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Social Policy is
Health Policy |
| What does social policy have to do with health? Decisions
that governments and corporations make every day benefit some and
burden others. Unfortunately, they often reinforce class, racial and
gender inequities that contribute to unequal patterns of illness and
premature death. Building a social movement that can advocate
effectively for more equitable social policies is critical to
changing our economic, physical and social environments so that they
promote rather than threaten our health. In other words, tackling health inequities is unavoidably a matter of politics; of engaging in struggles over how we want our government to allocate resources, regulate corporate power, and implement the principles of democracy. It is also a matter of empowering communities and reshaping institutions to address the social and economic conditions that profoundly shape our health. Tony Iton, MD, director of the Alameda County Public Health Department in California, points out that social policies that produce and reproduce socioeconomic and racial inequality have, over time, “taken many forms, including racially restrictive covenants on property, economic redlining in banking practices, school segregation, [unfair] housing and urban renewal policies, disinvestment in public transportation, discriminatory zoning practices, law enforcement racial profiling, [discriminatory] incarceration policies, and other deliberate governmental policies and practices.” But we’ve also made many changes during the last century that have improved health equity by improving peoples’ lives: the eight-hour work day, universal public high school, the right to collective bargaining, social security, civil rights, environmental standards... There’s no reason why we can’t do so again. Opportunities for change abound. Iton and others suggest a wide range of tangible policy options, including quality universal preschool, improved public school funding, living wage laws, affordable housing, zoning reform, improved public transit, fair immigration policies, criminal justice reform, and, of course, full employment, fair trade and even progressive tax policy. |
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Health Policy is Law |
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