Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T13:45:53.513Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

16 - The Global Contributions of Psychology to Understanding and Addressing the Non-negotiability of Human Dignity and Health Equity

from Part III - Contemporary Issues in Psychology and Human Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2020

By
Miriam Y. Vega  and
Caleb Otto
Edited by
Neal S. Rubin  and
Roseanne L. Flores
Neal S. Rubin
Affiliation:
Adler University
Roseanne L. Flores
Affiliation:
Hunter College, City University of New York
Get access

Summary

Human dignity is inextricably tied to health equity. In the past quarter century, concerns about widening health inequalities and inequities have increased worldwide. Highlighting this concern is the fact that the Sustainable Development Goals include one health goal and more than fifty health-related targets that are applicable to all countries. Psychology, with an understanding of the importance of the person–environment interaction, can help to meaningfully address health equity and promote the sustainable development goals of the UN 2030 Agenda. In this chapter, we focus on the contributions of psychology to promoting health equity and dignity, and well-being overall, highlighting pertinent research surrounding maternal health, HIV/AIDS, and mental health and well-being.

Keywords

SchoolsEducatorsPolicyCurriculum
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Human Rights , pp. 243 - 257
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1000 Genomes Project Consortium. (2015). A global reference for human genetic variation. Nature, 526(7571), 68–74.Google Scholar
Abbas, A. B., & Lichtman, A. H. (2010). Innate immunity. In Abbas, A. B. and Lichtman Saunders, A. H., Basic immunology: Functions and disorders of the immune system (Chapter 2; 3rd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Saunders Elsevier.Google Scholar
Acosta, J., Ramchand, R., Jaycox, L. H., Becker, A., & Eberhart, N. K. (2013). Interventions to prevent suicide: A literature review to guide evaluation of California’s mental health prevention and early intervention initiative. Rand Health Quarterly, 2(4), 2.Google ScholarPubMed
Ahmed, S., Creanga, A., Gillespie, D. G., & Tsui, A. O. (2010). Economic status, education and empowerment: Implications for maternal health service utilization in developing countries. PLOS ONE, 5(6), e11190.Google Scholar
Aizer, A., & Currie, J. (2014). The intergenerational transmission of inequality: Maternal disadvantage and health at birth. Science, 344(6186), 856–861.Google Scholar
Arbyn, M., Ronco, G., Anttila, A., Meijer, C. J., Poljak, M., Ogilvie, G., & Peto, J. (2012). Evidence regarding human papillomavirus testing in secondary prevention of cervical cancer. Vaccine, 30, F88–F99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Asian Development Bank. (2011). The workshop report: The Millennium Development Goals in Pacific Island Countries. Taking stock; Emerging issues and the way forward. www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/29077/mdg-pacific.pdfGoogle Scholar
Baird, M., Blount, A., Brungardt, S., Dickinson, P., Dietrich, A., Epperly, T., & McDaniel, S. (2014). Joint principles: Integrating behavioral health care into the patient-centered medical home. Annals of Family Medicine, 12(2), 183–185.Google Scholar
Berg, C. J., Callaghan, W. M., Syverson, C., & Henderson, Z. (2010). Pregnancy related mortality inthe United States, 1998 to 2005. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 116, 1302–1309.Google Scholar
Black, L. L., Johnson, R., & VanHoose, L. (2015). The relationship between perceived racism/discrimination and health among black American women: A review of the literature from 2003 to 2013. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 2(1), 11–20.Google Scholar
Blair, L. M., Porter, K., Leblebicioglu, B., & Christian, L. M. (2015). Poor sleep quality and associated inflammation predict preterm birth: Heightened risk among African Americans. Sleep, 38(8), 1259–1267.Google Scholar
Braveman, P. (2014). What is health equity? And how does a life-course approach take us further toward it? Maternal and Child Health Journal, 18(2), 366–372.Google Scholar
Brondolo, E., Ver Halen, N. B., Pencille, M., Beatty, D., & Contrada, R. J. (2009). Coping with racism: A selective review of the literature and a theoretical and methodological critique. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 32(1), 64–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boerma, W. G. (2006). Coordination and integration in European primary care. Primary Care in the Driver’s Seat, 3–21.Google Scholar
Buchanan, N. T., & Fitzgerald, L. F. (2008). Effects of racial and sexual harassment on work and the psychological well-being of African American women. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 13(2), 137–151.Google Scholar
Calderon, J., & Rojas, G. (2016). Integration of mental health into primary care: A Chilean perspective on a global challenge. BJPsych International, 13(1), 20–21.Google Scholar
Caplan, G. (1964). Principles of preventive psychiatry. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018). Monitoring selected national HIV prevention and care objectives by using HIV surveillance data: United States and 6 dependent areas, 2016. HIV Surveillance Supplemental Report, 23(4).Google Scholar
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2017). Diagnoses of HIV infection in the United States and dependent areas, 2016. HIV Surveillance Report, 28.Google Scholar
Chida, Y., & Steptoe, A. (2008). Positive psychological well-being and mortality: A quantitative review of prospective observational studies. Psychosomatic Medicine, 70(7), 741–756.Google Scholar
Collins, P. Y. (2008). Waving the banner of mental health revolution: Psychiatric reform and community mental health in the province of Rio Negro, Argentina. In Caldas, J. M., & Cohen, A. (Eds.), Innovative community mental health services in Latin America and the Caribbean (pp. 1–32). Washington, DC: PAHO.Google Scholar
Culyer, A. J., & Wagstaff, A. (1993). Equity and equality in health and health care. Journal of Health Economics, 12(4), 431–457.Google Scholar
Dailey, D. E. (2009). Social stressors and strengths as predictors of infant birth weight in low-income African American women. Nursing Research, 58(5), 340–347.Google Scholar
De Witte, H., Pienaar, J., & De Cuyper, N. (2016). Review of 30 years of longitudinal studies on the association between job insecurity and health and well-being: Is there causal evidence? Australian Psychologist, 51(1), 18–31.Google Scholar
Diener, E., Oishi, S., & Lucas, R. E. (2015). National accounts of subjective well-being. American Psychologist, 70(3), 234.Google Scholar
Dolan, P., Layard, R., & Metcalfe, R. (2011). Measuring Subjective Wellbeing for Public Policy: Recommendations on Measures. London School of Economics and Political Science, Center for Economic Performance. Special Paper No. 23, March.Google Scholar
Dorling, D., Shaw, M., & Smith, G. D. (2006). Global inequality of life expectancy due to AIDS. British Medical Journal, 332(7542), 662–664.Google Scholar
European Defence Agency. (2010). European–United States Defence Expenditure in 2009. p. 3.Google Scholar
Ferguson, L. (2017). Assessing work at the intersection of health and human rights: Why, how and who? In Andreassen, B. A. (Ed.), Research methods in human rights: A handbook (p. 408). Edward Elgar Publishing.Google Scholar
Garcia, J., Parker, C., Parker, R. G., Wilson, P. A., Philbin, M., & Hirsch, J. S. (2016). Psychosocial implications of homophobia and HIV stigma in social support networks: Insights for high-impact HIV prevention among black men who have sex with men. Health Education & Behavior, 43(2), 217–225.Google Scholar
Geronimus, A. T. (1992). The weathering hypothesis and the health of African-American women and infants: Evidence and speculations. Ethnicity and Disease, 2(3), 207–221.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Gwadz, M., Leonard, N. R., Honig, S., Freeman, R., Kutnick, A., & Ritchie, A. S. (2018). Doing battle with “the monster”: How high-risk heterosexuals experience and successfully manage HIV stigma as a barrier to HIV testing. International Journal for Equity in Health, 17(1), 46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Houweling, T., Rosmans, C., Campbell, O., & Kunst, A. (2007). Huge poor–rich inequalities in maternity care: An international comparative study of maternity and child care in developing countries. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 85, 745–754.Google Scholar
Institute of Medicine (US). (2012) What progress in reducing health disparities has been made? A historical perspective. In How far have we come in reducing health disparities? Progress since 2000. Workshop summary. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK114236/Google Scholar
Ivbijaro, G., & Funk, M. (2008). No mental health without primary care. Mental Health in Family Medicine, 5(3), 127–128.Google Scholar
Iyer, V., Sidney, K., Mehta, R., & Mavalankar, D. (2016). Availability and provision of emergency obstetric care under a public–private partnership in three districts of Gujarat, India: Lessons for universal health coverage. BMJ Global Health, 1(1), e000019.Google Scholar
Jacobsen, P. B., & Andrykowski, M. A. (2015). Tertiary prevention in cancer care: Understanding and addressing the psychological dimensions of cancer during the active treatment period. American Psychologist, 70(2), 134–145.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jaipal, R. (2014). Psychological contributions to sustainable development. Psychology International, 25(2), 1–4.Google Scholar
Kazdin, A. E. (2017). Addressing the treatment gap: A key challenge for extending evidence-based psychosocial interventions. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 88, 7–18.Google Scholar
Keyes, C. L., & Haidt, J. E. (2003). Flourishing: Positive psychology and the life well-lived. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Klein, R., & Huang, D. (2010). Defining and measuring disparities, inequities, and inequalities in the Healthy People initiative. National Center for Health Statistics Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Google Scholar
Kobau, R., Seligman, M. E., Peterson, C., Diener, E., Zack, M. M., Chapman, D., & Thompson, W. (2011). Mental health promotion in public health: Perspectives and strategies from positive psychology. American Journal of Public Health, 101(8), e1–e9.Google Scholar
Lankarani, K. B., Alavian, S. M., & Peymani, P. (2013). Health in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Challenges and progresses. Medical Journal of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 27(1), 42–49.Google Scholar
Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of topological psychology (pp. 4–7). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Lim, S. S., Allen, K., Bhutta, Z. A., Dandona, L., Forouzanfar, M. H., Fullman, N., & Kinfu, Y. (2016). Measuring the health-related Sustainable Development Goals in 188 countries: A baseline analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study, 2015. Lancet, 388(10053), 1813–1850.Google Scholar
Lorion, R. P., Myers, T. G., Bartels, C., & Dennis, A. (1994). Preventive intervention research: Pathways for extending knowledge of child/adolescent health and pathology. Advances in Clinical Child Psychology, 16, 109–139.Google Scholar
Major, B., & Schmader, T. (2017). Stigma, social identity threat, and health. In Major, B., Dovidio, J. F., & Link, B. G. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of stigma, discrimination, and health (vol. 85). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mariotti, A. (2015). The effects of chronic stress on health: New insights into the molecular mechanisms of brain–body communication. Future Science OA, 1(3), FSO23. http://doi.org/10.4155/fso.15.21Google Scholar
Marmot, M. (2015). The health gap: The challenge of an unequal world. Lancet, 386(10011), 2442–2444.Google Scholar
Mehta, M., & Kapoor, S. (2018). Role of psychosocial factors in the management of health problems. In Psychosocial interventions for health and well-being (pp. 15–28). New Delhi: Springer.Google Scholar
Mishra, S. (2018). Feminization of poverty and dimension of women’s agencies. Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 6(2).Google Scholar
Moller, A. B., Petzold, M., Chou, D., & Say, L. (2017). Early antenatal care visit: A systematic analysis of regional and global levels and trends of coverage from 1990 to 2013. Lancet Global Health, 5(10), e977–e983.Google Scholar
Neggers, Y. (2016). Trends in maternal mortality in the United States. Reproductive Toxicology, 64, 30–31.Google Scholar
Norheim, O. F., & Asada, Y. (2009). The ideal of equal health revisited: Definitions and measures of inequity in health should be better integrated with theories of distributive justice. International Journal for Equity in Health, 8, 40.Google Scholar
Ottersen, O. P., Dasgupta, J., Blouin, C., Buss, P., Chongsuvivatwong, V., & Frenk, J. (2014). The political origins of health inequity: Prospects for change. Lancet, 383(9917), 630–667.Google Scholar
Pachankis, J. E., Hatzenbuehler, M. L., Hickson, F., Weatherburn, P., Berg, R. C., Marcus, U., & Schmidt, A. J. (2015). Hidden from health: Structural stigma, sexual orientation concealment, and HIV across 38 countries in the European MSM Internet Survey. AIDS, 29(10), 1239–1246.Google Scholar
Perry, B. L., Harp, K. L. H., & Oser, C. B. (2013). Racial and gender discrimination in the stress process: Implications for African American women’s health and well-being. Sociological Perspectives: Official Publication of the Pacific Sociological Association, 56(1), 25–48.Google Scholar
Piot, P. (2006). AIDS: From crisis management to sustained strategic response. Lancet, 368, 526–530.Google Scholar
Read, J., & Gorman, B. (2010). Gender and health inequality. Annual Review of Sociology, 36, 371–386.Google Scholar
Richardson, E. T., Collins, S. E., Kung, T., Jones, J. H., Tram, K. H., Boggiano, V. L., … Zolopa, A. R. (2014). Gender inequality and HIV transmission: A global analysis. Journal of the International AIDS Society, 17(1), 19035.Google Scholar
Sekhon, M., Cartwright, M., & Francis, J. J. (2017). Acceptability of healthcare interventions: An overview of reviews and development of a theoretical framework. BMC Health Services Research, 17(88). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-017-2031-8Google Scholar
Sprague, C. (2018). Health outcomes and social factors influencing women’s HIV acquisition in social context. In Gender and HIV in South Africa (pp. 35–84). London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
UNAIDS. (2018). Factsheet: Global HIV & AIDS statistics. Geneva: Author.Google Scholar
UNAIDS. (2012). Fact sheet: Adolescents, young people and HIV. Geneva: Author.Google Scholar
UNDP. (2011, October 19). A social determinants approach to maternal health: Roles for development actors. Discussion paper; Bureau for Development Policy.Google Scholar
United Nations. (1945). Charter of the United Nations. New York, NY: Author.Google Scholar
United Nations. (1993). General Assembly Resolution, 48/121.Google Scholar
United Nations. (2015). Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.Google Scholar
Vega, M. Y. (2016). Combating stigma and fear: Applying psychosocial lessons learned from the HIV epidemic and SARS to the current Ebola crisis. The psychosocial aspects of a deadly epidemic: What ebola has taught us about holistic healing (p. 271). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.Google Scholar
Vega, M. Y., Spieldenner, A. R., DeLeon, D., Nieto, B. X., & Stroman, C. A. (2010). SOMOS: evaluation of an HIV prevention intervention for Latino gay men. Health Education Research, 26(3), 407–418.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, N. B., Yen, I. H., & Syme, S. L. (2011). Integration of social epidemiology and community-engaged interventions to improve health equity. American Journal of Public Health, 101(5), 822–830.Google Scholar
Whitehead, M. (1991). The concepts and principles of equity and health. Health Promotion International, 6(3), 217–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodhouse, C., Lopez Camelo, J., & Wehby, G. L. (2014). A comparative analysis of prenatal care and fetal growth in eight South American countries. PLOS ONE, 9(3), e91292.Google Scholar
World Health Organization (WHO). (2018). World health statistics 2018: Monitoring health for the SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals. Geneva: Author.Google Scholar
World Health Organization. (2014). Basic documents. Geneva: Author.Google Scholar
World Health Organization. (2000). The world health report 2000: Health systems. Improving performance. Geneva, Switzerland: Author.Google Scholar
World Health Organization. (1978, September 6–12). Declaration of Alma-Ata: International Conference on Primary Health Care, Alma-Ata, USSR. www.who.int/publications/almaata_declaration_en.pdf. Accessed August 23, 2018.Google Scholar
World Health Organization. (2008). The Commission on the Social Determinants of Health final report. Geneva: Author.Google Scholar
Wright, R. J. (2009). Stress and acquired glucocorticoid resistance: A relationship hanging in the balance. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 123(4), 831–832.Google Scholar
Wu, I. H., Bathje, G. J., Kalibatseva, Z., Sung, D., Leong, F. T., & Collins-Eaglin, J. (2017). Stigma, mental health, and counseling service use: A person-centered approach to mental health stigma profiles. Psychological Services, 14(4), 490–501.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×