What is Health?
Health can be defined as “the ability of all people within the community to reach full mental, spiritual and physical potential by living in safety with vigour and purpose; meeting personal needs; meeting community responsibilities; adapting to change; and having trusting and caring relationships.” (Mayor’s Task Force on Lincoln General Sales Proceeds, 1998)
Social Justice is the Foundation of Health
“To declare that social justice is the foundation of public health is to call upon and nurture that invincible human spirit… a spirit that has a compelling desire to make the world a better place, free of misery, inequity, and preventable suffering, a world in which we all can live, love, work, play, ail, and die with our dignity intact and our humanity cherished.”
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Health Equity
Health equity is the ethical principle, grounded in human rights and social justice, that guides our collective action in public policy, social and health systems, research, and practice to eliminate “avoidable” disparities in health outcomes and “inequitable” distribution of health determinants that adversely affect marginalized groups.
The principle of health equity attends to how wealth, power and prestige are built on systems of oppression – racism, colonialism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, ageism, xenophobia, etc. – that reinforce social hierarchies and justify social, economic, political, and environmental inequities that (re)produce health disparities.
Our Values and Principles
The Health Equity Research Collaborative is a collective built on our shared vision of building and sustaining a socially just and compassionate society through critical, ethical, and inclusive research, policy and practice. Our values and principles are:
- Social justice and equity
- Honouring and celebrating interconnections/interdependence
- Meaningful engagement of affected communities (nothing about me without me)
- Shared leadership and equitable participation
- Capacity building and collective empowerment
Our Goal
Recognizing that health is the product of power relations and (in)equitable distribution of material and symbolic resources in society, the overall goal of our research is to generate knowledge that can be used to engage and mobilize communities, practitioners, researchers and policy-makers to co-develop community-centred solutions and work collaboratively to reduce social inequities and avoidable health disparities.
Our Approaches
- Community-centred and strength-based
- Participatory action and outcome oriented
- Capacity building and succession planning
- Multi-level integrative strategies and innovation
Our Research Foci
- Migration and health equity (immigrants, refugees, temporary foreign workers, international students, etc.)
- Social identities and health practices
- Stigma reduction and resilience promotion (HIV, mental illness, sexuality, etc.)
- Structural determinants of chronic illnesses (access to healthcare, food security, etc.)
- Responsive interventions and implementation research
