Power Up

A Call for Public Health to Recognize, Analyze, and Shift the Balance in Power Relations to Advance Health and Racial Equity

American Journal of Public Health (2023)

Jonathan C. Heller PhD, Paul J. Fleming PhD, MPH, Ryan J. Petteway DrPH, MPH, Marjory Givens PhD, MSPH, and Keshia M. Pollack Porter PhD, MPH

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Excerpt

“Shifting power will require new relationships and collaborations—for example, with community organizing groups that have long focused on shifting power to marginalized communities. It will require that public health researchers ask how research contributes to power-building and shift to more inclusive methods such as participatory research.15 Public health will need to reconsider what is viewed as legitimate data and research, how knowledge is assessed and validated, and how to challenge dominant narratives that block progress toward structural change.16

To enable this externally facing work, public health practitioners will need to examine our own power and positionality, understanding the power we have and how it can be harnessed to advance equity. Public health organizations will need to transform institutional practices, critically examining processes for research, funding, publishing, administration, and training.16 Public health training will need to reorient around advocacy, social action, and political engagement, and abandon teaching that we are “objective” and “neutral” arbiters of science.”