Nancy Krieger, PhD, visited Yale on December 3, 2018 to discuss how health inequities in the US today reflect how people biologically embody structural injustice, both past and present.
Nancy Krieger, PhD, visited Yale on December 3, 2018 to discuss “Embodying Social Injustice: Why Past and Present Structural Racism Matters for Health and Justice Today.”
This talk was part of the Health Justice Speaker Series.
Challenging the dominant view that the only inheritance that matters for health is genetic, Krieger addressed the ongoing health impacts of the socially inherited histories of Jim Crow and racialized economic segregation. Using ecosocial theory, which considers who and what drive societal patterns of disease distribution, Krieger explored why thinking historically matters for challenging structural injustices and advancing health equity today.
Krieger, professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is an internationally renowned social epidemiologist with a background in biochemistry, philosophy of science, and history of public health, combined with decades of experience as an activist at the intersections of social justice, health equity, and science.
This event was sponsored by the Yale College Global Health Studies Multidisciplinary Academic Program and Yale Global Health Justice Partnership.
Co-sponsors included: Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration; Yale Sociology Department; Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases Department, YSPH; Yale School of Nursing; Solomon Center for Health Law & Policy, YLS; Social and Behavioral Sciences Department, YSPH; Equity Research and Innovation Center, YSM