Katharine Hayward, a public health and disability studies scholar, has noted that public health campaigns tend to lean on the fear around becoming disabled to persuade people to practice desired health practices - this fear mongering leans back on the medical model of disability by locating the individuals as the site of disability and by aliging and individuals disability with bad outcomes. This can easily move into eugenical thinking.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Dr. Elena M. Andresen, a professor emerita from Oregon Health and Sciences University, details that one of the main sites of friction between public health and disability studies is the differing view of prevention work between the two fields. Andresen notes that in disability studies literature prevention is often presented akin to eugenics in preventing the existence of people with disabilities - whereas folks in the Public Health field view prevention through the lens of preventing the incidence and severity of an injury or condition, public health does not consider disability selective abortion or euthanasia as part of public health work but it is easy to see the slippery slope from preventing incidences and severity to preventing disability.

The Conflict Between Public Health and Disability Studies

While doing research for the parent node I ran into the following Sierra Club ad. While this was not the advertisement previously mentioned I thought this advertisement also should receive attention because how it in particular uses a child's chronic illness as a example of exploitation of the environment.

Further Examples of Advertisements from the Sierra Club

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

Learn Before

Related