Throughout its work with individuals with HIV/AIDs the NBWHP both worked to reduce incidents of preventable disabiling diseases while also advocating for improved community supports for individuals with existing disabilities and chronic illnesses that highlighted that disabled and ill individuals have a right to dignity and joy. 

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Often when Black or other racially marginalized group express a desire for wellness or healing it is read in white disability studies as internalized ableist expressions of desire for able-bodied/mindedness. This is not always the case. NBWHP's definitions of health and wellness do not exclude disabled people or rely of a cure. Individual definitions of wellness allow for investment in a hoslistic, cultural and political approach to health and wellness that does not exclude disability and is based on creating positive impacts for generations of Black people.

How Self-definition of Wellness Relates to Black Disability Politics

Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478027003

Black Disability Politics

Example of Self-Definitions of Wellness and Black Disability Politics

Instead of portraying disability as a symbol of harm against Black women by using self-definitions of health the NBWHP refused to stigmatize or shame Black women and emphasized the mutual consituttion of oppressions.

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