{"id":489,"date":"2025-01-30T05:47:39","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T10:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/accessiblehealthcare\/?post_type=chapter&p=489"},"modified":"2025-04-29T15:40:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T19:40:08","slug":"health-for-all-but-for-whom","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/accessiblehealthcare\/chapter\/health-for-all-but-for-whom\/","title":{"raw":"\u201cHealth for all,\u201d but for whom?","rendered":"\u201cHealth for all,\u201d but for whom?"},"content":{"raw":"

Social Performance and Health Promotion<\/span><\/h2>\r\nSo, why does the public health community continue to uphold the [pb_glossary id=\"733\"]biomedical model of health[\/pb_glossary]? And what are the impacts for people with disabilities?\r\n\r\nLet\u2019s go back to the WHO\u2019s concept of health promotion. The WHO defines it as \u201cthe process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health\u201d (WHO, 2024). Berthelot-Raffard (2022) illustrates how conceptions of health promotion that are rooted in people taking \u201ccontrol\u201d over their mental and physical well-being equate health with \u201cnormal functioning,\u201d seen as the ability to operate at the level of social performance expected in modern society. In our world, that means the ability to live and work independently, to make a living, and to minimize vulnerabilities that may cause a \u201cburden\u201d on the health system. Indeed, the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986) begins its priority strategies with \u201cGood health is a major resource for social, economic and personal development.\u201d Health is positioned as being in service to societal advancement, rather than the other way around. What is really being safeguarded here, and what or who is at stake when health is seen as a \u201cresource\u201d?\r\n

Colonialism, Climate Crisis, and Justice<\/span><\/h2>\r\nJen Deerinwater (2021) provides a revealing account of the compounding health crises caused by colonial invasion, which have had devastating impacts on Indigenous people and particularly deaf, disabled, and ill Indigenous people. The global climate crisis, the poisoning of land and water, the forcible removal from land and severing of natural systems of care, the petrochemical and agricultural industries, the pillaging of resources, the imposition of European misogynist culture, and the permeation of ableist norms in Indigenous life, all have contributed to devastating health outcomes for disabled Indigenous people. These forces have eroded the critical roles disabled people have played in their communities and reinforced the idea that their lives are worthless. For Deerinwater and other disabled Indigenous people, health restoration needs to entail an end to colonial capitalism and a fight for disability and climate justice.\r\n
\r\n\r\n\"Video\r\n

Media Moment<\/h3>\r\nTime: 18 minutes, 11 seconds<\/strong>\r\n
\r\n\r\nEngage with the following video about climate change and Indigenous resistance by watching below or accessing the transcript.\r\n\r\n[embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=N0P-COMCJ-w[\/embed]\r\n\r\n\r\nFirst Nations in Canada Leading Climate Change Resistance \u2013 Point of No Return\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\n[h5p id=\"43\"]<\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\"Podcast\r\n

Media Moment<\/h3>\r\nTime: 54 minutes, 1 second<\/strong>\r\n
\r\n\r\nTake some time to engage with the following podcast that discusses how structural forces and climate change reshape Indigenous relationships to the land and health:\r\n