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Public Health Liberation is dedicated to elevating public health to be aligned with everyday experiences with health. This includes creative expression, news aggregation, and storytelling. We believe that pathways for improved community health is deeply embedded in being receptive and responsive to diverse human expression, communication, and needs. Public Health Liberation deeply values the indispensable role and contribution of women as the gateway for achieving health equity.
We want to share your story on health and well-being. We accept all perspectives and creative forms. We just require that your work is original and publishable on our website. We can also link to sources that you find compelling and relevant. Email info@publichealthliberation.com
AI Series: Public Health Economy
We asked AI five essential questions about Public Health Liberation theory.
Former CDC Directors on the Public Health Economy: Infrastructure is Broken
Former CDC directors gathered in April 2022 to discuss the state of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - the leading federal public health research and response agency in the US. The Covid pandemic raised the profile and public criticism. They mostly limited their discussion to the traditional public health infrastructure of surveillance, public health research, and emergency preparedness and response. Their critical assessment of the CDC can be extrapolated to support Public Health Liberation (PHL) theory on disorder in the public health economy, which contravenes the public health commitment and capacity to address health inequity. Accelerating health equity particularly by income and race is the mission of Public Health Liberation. The challenges within the CDC are structural, political, and cultural, encumbered by underfunding and a lack of mission-driven strategic focus. By its own admission, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) faces structural and systemic operational challenges, which were exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic…However, since the pandemic, we also acknowledge that CDC is responsible for some large, public mistakes.”
Their discussion highlights the interaction of the political economy with public health aims and provide evidence of the assumptions of public health realism that posits hyper-competition and tensions to explain constraints on the CDC and the public health economy broadly. Rick Berke, Co-Founder and STAT Executive Editor moderated a critical dialogue among Bill Foege (CDC Director, 1977 to 1983), Tom Frieden (CDC Director, 2009 to 2017), Julie Gerberding (CDC Director, 2002 to 2009), Robert Redfield, (CDC Director, 2018 to 2021), and Bill Roper (CDC Director, 1990 to 1993). The purpose of this essay is to ground CDC challenges within PHL theory and practice.
Manuscript Section Guide and Index
Public Health Liberation is a rich and complex approach to understanding and affecting drivers of health inequity. A section guide and index are intended to guide the readers and serve as a referential document for future reading. Given the denseness of our discussion and the 20-30 minutes that are required for a thorough read, we suspect that readers will repeatedly return to master the constructs and theories. This guide is available for download on our website.
Moral and Religious Reasoning in Political Engagement: Learning from Faith Leaders
Public Health Liberation seeks to centrally situate philosophy in public health discourse on accelerating equity. Philosophy is broadly defined as a worldview based on moral, cultural, and religious teachings and standards by which to make sound judgments and to engage in critical analysis. PHL encourages a clear articulation of relevant values as part of a general strategy to accelerate health equity and encourage order in the Public Health Economy. Ethical and religious beliefs benefit public health discourse.
American Hospitals: Healing a Broken System - New Documentary
American Hospitals: Healing a Broken System premiered on March 29, 2023 at the E Street Cinema in Washington, DC. This documentary provides a provocative look inside the world of profit-driven motives in US healthcare. Unfinished Business Foundation, founded by Richard Master, produced this fourth installment in its documentary series. The major conclusion is that the US healthcare system has fueled an unequal system in which socioeconomic factors, geography, and payer-mix take priority over healthcare access and quality. Rising healthcare costs in the US are unsustainable.
Public Health Liberation – An Emerging Transdiscipline to Elucidate and Transform the Public Health Economy
Public Health Liberation (PHL) is an innovative general theory of public health aimed at accelerating health equity. This paper provides a rich synthesis of philosophical traditions, novel theories, and approaches to establish the basis for a new public health transdiscipline. The authors argue that the "public health economy" as a single analytic lens elucidates the contradictions and tensions that reproduce vast health inequity. Authored by a majority of Black women, community experiences and perspectives are a major strength of this paper because they draw upon leadership experiences with contemporary issues.
The authors begin by describing their background in public health advocacy and by demonstrating the need for PHL using lead-contaminated water crises from Flint, Michigan and Washington, DC. They discuss the benefits of horizontal and vertical integration that broaden public health discourse to include affected populations and that seek opportunities throughout the public health economy. Their philosophical and theoretical reasoning reinterprets and adopts disciplinary concepts in political theory, sociology, women's studies, African American emancipatory writing, anti-racism, and community psychology to form a culturally relevant worldview and cogent thesis. Several new constructs emerge that do not appear elsewhere in the literature - Gaze of the Enslaved, Morality Principle, liberation, illiberation, liberation safe spaces, public health realism, and hegemony. The authors use their ethical and theoretical assumptions to guide practice and community self-help. Public Health Liberation presents a major challenge to assumptions about public health effectiveness in addressing vast health inequity.
Creative Arts.
“Maybe, we the project”
University professor and poetess PS Perkins reminds us about the humanity and lived experiences of families who live in public housing communities. She read her poem, “When a House is Not a Home” at the PHL National Webinar and Conversation on Liberation Philosophy, Systems Thinking, and Social Determinants of Health.
Documentary on Gentrification Captures Community Voices
Prior to starting Public Health Liberation,, Christopher Williams began an unfinished documentary to capture community voices in this gentrifying neighborhood of Washington, DC.
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