Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Social justice is routinely identified as a central value for public health practice. For instance, the claim that 'social justice is the foundation of public health' has a long history in both the public health and public health ethics literature. The concept of social justice is commonly invoked in practice as well; for example, 'a commitment to social justice' is included in the Public Health Agency of Canada's statement on the core competencies necessary for the practice of public health. Yet, at the same time it is rarely acknowledged that social justice is a multifaceted concept with a rich pedigree in philosophy. As such, the concept of social justice often precludes a single (or simple) interpretation or application, which means a commitment to social justice in practice might tend to refer to diverse, if not divergent, views about the ethical goals and obligations of public health. If social justice is to play a central role in public health, then its conceptual and practical features ought to be further investigated so that it may provide robust, consistent, and practicable ethical guidance for policy and practice. While an emerging body of philosophical literature has begun to explore the concept of social justice in public health, this work has not empirically explored how those working in public health conceptualize social justice in their practice nor the extent to which these perspectives align with philosophical accounts of social justice. This presentation reports findings from a qualitative study that involved key informant interviews with public health policy-makers in two distinct domains of public health in Canada, chronic disease prevention and public health emergency preparedness and response, which were conducted with the aim of achieving contextual understanding of how social justice is conceptualized and negotiated in public health practice and to capture whether different norms of social justice exist in different public health contexts.