Structural injustice and dismantling racism in health and healthcare

Racism in health and healthcare has long been recognised as a structural issue. While there has been growing research and a number of important initiatives that have come from approaching racism as a structural issue, there is a range of implications that yet have to be explored as they relate to health and healthcare. Conceptualising racism in this way provides a means to consider how it shapes and is shaped by a range of global injustices and serves as a foundation for more egregious harms. It also suggests that if we are to dismantle racism, we need to look both within and beyond the traditional domains of health and healthcare and account for a range of broader forces that sustain and re-enforce racism. We first discuss the issue of responsibility, drawing on Young's social connection model to argue that we all have a responsibility to take action in addressing structural racism. We will then deal with a question that naturally follows, namely how we discharge our responsibilities, with a focus on the role of disruptive action in challenging power and ignorance in dismantling racism in health and healthcare.