McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics, McGovern Medical School, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 6431 Fannin Street, Jesse Jones Library 450, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.
J Bioeth Inq. 2023 Dec;20(4):585-590. doi: 10.1007/s11673-023-10299-8. Epub 2023 Oct 16.
Using the example of Black people's inequitable COVID-19 outcomes and their health outcomes prior to the pandemic, I argue that the pandemic has forever changed how we should think about the conceptual and practical nature of health equity. From here on, we can no longer think of health equity without the concept of intersectionality. In particular, we must acknowledge that discrimination (e.g. sexism, ableism, racism, classism, etc.) within our social institutions intersect to withhold resources needed for health from people who themselves have intersecting identities that make them vulnerable to the effects of discrimination. To ignore intersectionality in our work on health equity would mean ignoring a great injustice imposed on some of the most overlooked people in our communities, which would also be a great disserve to bioethics' professional longevity.
以黑人群体在新冠疫情中不平等的感染和病亡率，以及他们在疫情前的健康状况为例，我认为，这场大流行已经永久性地改变了我们对健康公平的概念和实践性质的看法。从今往后，我们不能再脱离交叉性概念去思考健康公平。具体而言，我们必须承认，社会机构中的歧视（例如性别歧视、残疾歧视、种族歧视、阶级歧视等）会相互交织，从而剥夺那些具有相互交织的身份特征、因而容易受到歧视影响的人们所需的健康资源。如果我们在健康公平方面的工作中忽视交叉性，就意味着忽视了强加在我们社区中一些最被忽视的人身上的巨大不公正，这也将极大地损害生物伦理学的专业寿命。
