webinar register page

An Eco-Structural Approach to Health Ethics

Speaker: Lisa Eckenwiler, PhD, George Mason University

Dr. Eckenwiler will describe an eco-structural approach (ESA) to health ethics, suggesting that it should advance ethical ideals in many domains, especially health justice. With a conception of people as ecological subjects, an ESA privileges place, seeing people as dwelling in particular health ecosystems. How do conditions support or undermine health? Simultaneously, an ESA situates us in social norms & processes. Do these enhance the capability to be healthy? Do they generate structural health injustice?  We operationalize an ESA in patient care by attending to conditions in the sites where birthing, healing, & dying take place, their lights, sounds, smells, material provisions, & physical design. In long-term care, an ESA recognizes design & other place-related features, & also critiques the “sourcing” of its workforce from low-income countries for contributing to global health inequities. With public health, an ESA sutures sundered relations with health care & with sectors significant to health, like urban planning. Relationships between people, animals, land, the built environment, & climate demand attention, as do racist norms & global economic processes that thwart health justice in long-ensconced ways. An ESA might envision a revolution in health governance that challenges nationalism, where health systems serve (some) citizens, yet are dependent on human resources supplied via colonial ties, global economic structures, & labor policies. An ESA might have us design around shared investment in & global coordination of health worker education & deployment, tailored to specific health ecosystems to help ensure equity.

Objectives: After this seminar, participants will:
1. Be able to define social determinant of health
2. Be able to define structural injustice and structural health injustice
3. Be able to explain why "place" is important for health

Dec 9, 2022 12:15 PM in Central Time (US and Canada)