The NBWHP was not an organization based around disability rights but frequently acted in solidarity with disabled people and included disabled people in leadership positions.

Mentions of Disability by the NBWHP

In addition to naming the impacts of racism and sexism on Black women's health, the NBWHP also frequently mentioned classism and homophobia and rarely mentioned oppression faced by older adults, disabled people and fat people. 

University of Wisconsin - Madison

The NBWHP's work is intersectional in nature because it is centered on the intersection of race and gender. This is evident both with how the organization grew out of white feminist health activism as a specifically Black feminist health organization, but also in publications and internal documents that overwhelmingly name racism and sexism as categories of oppression with major impacts on Black women's health.

Intersectionality and the NBWHP

Through centering Black Disabled people the Black Panther also showed how they had been influenced by the writings of Black feminists such as Frances M. Beal's conception of "double jeopardy" by using terms like multi-disabilities and double whammy to show the intersections of racism and ableism for Black disabled people. 

The Black Panthers Centering of Intersectionality 

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

Black Disability Politics

Intersectional Approaches at NBWHP Beyond Race and Gender

When compared to the Black Panther Party the National Black Women's Health Project centered the experiences of Black women from their founding and had an intersectional approach that while itmore narrowly focused their work on Black women also from the beginnging centered on the intersection of race and gender in way that the Black Panther Party did not.

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