assignment

Description

We have been discussing and understanding how health is not accessible to all for many different and complex reasons. Systems are designed with one body / user / experience in mind, built environment and geography, hegemonic values on where we allocate resources, and history of ways we have built our system are some of the bigger reasons. This assignment is asking you to three things: dive deep into a particular health equity issue, take it up using the lens of intersectionality, and then propose an innovative approach to building equity for the group facing barriers. 1. You will identify a health inequity problem in Canada today: a barrier or gap in access to health (broadly defined). This could mean access to a particular part of our health care system, access to housing, access to education, access to mental health services, it can be about COVID19 or not. 2. You will then use the framework of intersectionality to look at how a particular group of people living at particular intersections have been denied access in specific ways. Eg: Women with disabilities, queer youth, Indigenous mothers. You will outline WHAT the problem is, how this particular group is not accessing the service, program or resource. Why is this particular group not accessing the specific thing they need to be healthy/well? You will use academic literature AND reports or grey literature from community groups, advocates, activists, alternative policy groups, users themselves. Remember that intersectionality is asking us to uncover where the gaps in access are and also to seek out the perspective and voices of those experiencing the oppression. Questions to ask yourself: Who is this service/program/resource serving? Whose body or mind does it value? Who is celebrated and who is left out of the picture? What are folks living at the intersections of this identity experiencing and saying about what needs to change. 3. You will then use the course reading on Targeted and Universal approaches to health equity (https://nccdh.ca/images/uploads/Approaches_EN_Final.pdf) to come up with an innovative approach to HOW you would design an intervention to the problem. Is your intervention universal? Targeted? Targeted universal? You need to design a specific intervention, from one of the approaches, and explain what this intervention is, what gap or barrier it intervenes in and why it is needed. Explain why you chose to design the intervention in this way. Critical Perspective: At all times, your writing should have a critical perspective. Do not simply describe the issue. You must examine reasons for the issue, try to explain how it has come to be, other contributing factors that might have been overlooked, etc. Remember to center the voices of those who are impacted. Reference List: Your assignment must use 4- 5 academic references. These include articles from peer-reviewed academic journals, books, or government documents. You may use up to two course readings. Newspaper and magazine articles may be used but do not count as academic references. The list must be done in APA style. The reference list does not count in your page count. Your assignment should be approximately 4 double-spaced pages in length (no more than 5 pages), font Times New Roman 12, with page numbers, title page, reference page. It must include between 4 – 5 scholarly references, properly referenced (APA).