Cultivating Empathy
- Being empathetic is a critical component of advocacy
- Obama’s 2006 speech: empathy is essential for advocacy.
- Advocacy requires understanding others’ experiences.
Health Equity
- Is the absence of avoidable or remediable health differences among groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically or geographically
- Reducing health inequalities is critical because health is a fundamental human right
- Inequality: Difference in health experiences or outcomes between different populations
- Inequity: Unfair, avoidable differences.
- Goal: eliminate inequities because health is a human right.
What Does it Mean to be an Advocate
- One that pleads the cause of another
- One that pleads the cause of another before a tribunal or judicial court
- One that defends or maintains a cause of proposal
- One that supports or promotes the interests of another
- Being an advocate helps the causes of people who need support to be fairly represented or defended
Responsibilities of Health Advocates
Patient Needs
- Respond to individual patient health needs and issues as part of patient care
Community Needs
- Respond to the health needs of the communities that they serve
Identify SDH
- Idtify the SDH of the population that they serve
- By identifying and addressing these factors, health equality can be achieved
Health Promotion
- Promote health of patients, communities and populations
Levels of Advocacy
- Individual
- Community
- Global/Humanitarian
Individual Advocacy
- Making a difference for someone in need of assistance
- visiting lonely person, finding resources
Community Advocacy
- Recognizing and acting upon a defined need in the community in which you live
- Assisting a community organization that aims at mediating health inequalities or assisting in changing civic policy
- Health professionals play an important role in their community as their influence can be used to strengthen the health outcomes of the communtiy
- Dr. Jerry Brown taught, trained and treated hundreds of people during Ebola outbreak
Global/Humanitarian Advocacy
- Recognizing the socia determinants of health on a more global level, acting to change the effects through work with communities or through changing policies
- Dr. Helen Caldicott → advocates against the effects of nuclear wars and nuclear waste, won the nobel peace prize in 1985, continues to speak to the global community about what is considered to be one of the greatest threats ot humanity even tho she received threats to her safety
Example 1 of Historical Advocates
Tommy Douglas (Saskatchewan premier → father of socialized medicine which was the original beginnings of our current healthcare system in Canada)
- had unfortunate views on gay rights, eugenics policies and social and educational seggregation
- during the firs half of the 20th century, advocated for sterilization of people with disabilities and un-moral women
- Positioned Indigenous women as un-moral and actively promoted their sterilization which is listed as an act of genocide
- 64 Indigenous women from Sashatchewan have come forward with allegations of forced sterilization spanning from 1985 to 2018
Example 2 of Historical Advocates
The Suffragette movement (advocated for change within society to allow and accept women’s rights).
- Emily Murphy and Nellie McClung
- Embodied maternal feminism
- Supported and encouraged the reproduction of married, Christian, middle-upper class, white women because this maintained a majority of the population in Canada
- Advocated for the sterilization of Black women, Indigenous women, women of Colour, non-Christian women, non-Anglo Saxon/Norther European immigrant women, women with disabilities, women of lower socio-economic status and those that lie at the intersections of the identities
- Believed that these women threatened the establishment of a white settler state in Canada through their capacity to reproduce. McClung arranged appointments for these women to ensure their sterilization
- Murphy (first female Magistrate Court Judge in Alberta) sentenced women to be sterilized on the basis of their social location
- Maternal feminists reinforced eugenics attitudes that women should be defined by their reproductive capacity
Example 3 of Historical Advocates
Martin Luther King Jr (instrumental leader during the civil rights movement for African Americans to gain equal rights)
Example 1 of Modern Advocates
- Dr. Cindy Blackstock (Has 25 years experience in child protection and Indigenous children’s rights social work, helped develop the United Nations Declration on the Rights of the Child).
- Geena Rocero (transgender supermodel, founder of the Gender Proud media production company that advocates for transgender rights, has spoken about trans rights at the UN headqaurters, White House).
- Autumn Peltier (clean water advocate since the age of 15, Anishinabek Nation).
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
- Adopted: December 10, 1948 by the UN General Assembly.
- Purpose: Recognize the basic freedoms and rights that all people should have.
- Core principle: Rights apply to everyone regardless of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political opinion, national/social origin, property, birth, or status.
- Right to Health: Specifically included in Article 25
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, including:
- Food
- Clothing
- Housing
- medical care
- necessary social services
Everyone has the right to security in circumstances such as
- Unemployment
- Sickness
- Disability
- Widowhood
- old age
- other lack of livelihood due to circumstances beyond their control
Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance.
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Connection to Indigenous Rights
- UNDRIP (2007) expands on the UDHR, ensuring:
- Indigenous Peoples’ survival, dignity, well-being.
- Specific rights to maintain health practices and traditional medicines (Article 24).
- Articles 8, 21, 23, and 29 also emphasize health, land, and cultural rights
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Module 1 Section 128
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Module 2 Section 111
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Module 3 Section 122
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Module 3 Section 251
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Module 3 Section 334
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Module 4 Section 110
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Module 4 Section 29
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Module 5 Section 113
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Module 6 Section 134
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