Marcel and Josephine Patterson Memorial Lecture in the Medical Humanities

A Bounded Justice Approach:

Recognizing and Measuring the Limits of Equity

Melissa Creary, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
School of Public Health
University of Michigan

 Thursday, March 9, 2023

12:00pm - 1:00pm

Health Education Center (HEC) Room. 3.206

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for this Zoom webinar.

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Programs, policies, and technologies —particularly those concerned with health equity — are often

designed with justice envisioned as the end goal. These policies or interventions, however, frequently fail to

recognize how the beneficiaries have historically embodied the cumulative effects of marginalization, which

undermines the effectiveness of the intended justice. These well-meaning attempts at justice are bounded

 by greater socio-historical constraints. Bounded justice suggests that it is impossible to attend to fairness,

entitlement, and equity when the basic social and physical infrastructures underlying them have been

eroded by racism and other historically entrenched -isms. Using the cases of Brazilian health policy, U.S.

-based cannabis social equity provisions, and scientific interest in sickle cell disease, this talk will critique

 the inherent limitations of social justice projects that ignore structural forms of social exclusion and will

 discuss opportunities for obtaining deeper equity via research methodology and praxis.