Lubin notes that this environment-centered way of thinking has roots in the advent of public health more than a century ago, when officials focused on improving residents’ environment through sanitation to stop the spread of communicable diseases. Scholars of color, particularly black scholars, have also long recognized the strong link between environment and health. W.E.B. DuBois, for example, chronicled the social factors that led to the ill health of African Americans in a Philadelphia neighborhood in 1899’s The Philadelphia Negro.

Yet for much of the twentieth century, many public health leaders emphasized individual control over well-being. A fixation on diet, exercise, and other life choices made good health the result of virtue and poor health a personal failing. While an individual’s choices certainly play a role in their health, Lubin says that understanding patients’ social contexts is critical to advancing the medical profession. Read more at CityLab

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Dr. Lubin’s article, Inclusion and Exclusion of Latinos in the Affordable Care Act: Challenges and Opportunities for Achieving Health Equity, examines outreach strategies and various components of the health law to assess its ability to reduce and prevent the exacerbation of health inequities. The article examines the political environment that shaped the Affordable Care Act and its implications for Latino health. The inclusive and exclusionary aspects of some of the ACA’s provisions and implementation is explored within the context of the nation’s commitment to the elimination of health disparities and international consensus on a right to medical care regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, age, income, or legal status. Lubin concludes:

Notwithstanding the Affordable Care Act’s many benefits, variations in the states’ expansion of Medicaid and the continuation of the 1996 welfare reform policy making some legal immigrants ineligible for benefits will limit the extent to which Latinos gain access to quality, affordable, and culturally appropriate care and treatment.

The full text of the article can be downloaded from the Social Science Research Network’s website: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2431261.

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She notes “Since as far back as 1899, W.E.B. Du Bois documented racial health disparities and their link to poverty and discrimination. Today, we have made few advances in addressing what Martin Luther King, Jr, called the “most shocking and inhumane” of all forms of inequality.”

“Access to a primary care doctor and screenings to prevent or catch health conditions before they worsen is a critical part of reducing these disparities,” she adds.

PSC has worked extensively in the area of health disparities, working with national health and policy organizations to improve the health of women and people of color.

Read the entire blog post.

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