Power, Privilege, and Public Health in the United States Theory and Practice

How can we teach health professionals, who are among the most privileged in American society, to best serve those who are the least privileged in American society? Power, Privilege, and Public Health in the United States discusses the ways in which power and privilege along intersectional axes of race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and other characteristics show up in public health and medicine practice, teaching, and research. It provides foundational knowledge on theories in power and privilege as well as examples of the ways in which the health and medical fields have been complicit in creating health inequities and maintaining oppressive structures that can be used to understand health distribution, differences, and disparities. To enact change, the contributors to this text enrich their chapters with practical guidance for developing anti-oppression competencies as well as experiential activities to examine how our own power and privilege influence the design, implementation, and interpretation of health studies and public health practice.

In drawing attention to the actors and institutions that have led to inequitable health outcomes, Power, Privilege, and Public Health in the United States does more than simply highlight the problems that plague health in the US; it equips teachers and learners with the tools to enact change, straight from leading experts in academia and public health practice.

Lorraine T. Dean is Associate Professor of Epidemiology at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dean's work focuses on privilege and health, including social and economic determinants of disparities in chronic health. In 2022, she received the Sherman A. James Diverse and Inclusive Epidemiology Award from the Society for Epidemiological Research.

Keilah A. Jacques is Adjunct Instructor at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and School of Nursing. As an applied researcher and educator, Jacques supports competency development in social justice practice and advances scholarship on anti-oppression in education. In 2019, she and Dr. Dean together won the Delta Omega Award for Innovative Public Health Curriculum.