How Might we Build an Equitable Future? Design Justice, a Counternarrative to Dominant Approaches in Medical...

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Health Equity
• Social Justice in Healthcare

Background:

• Marginalized individuals in medicine encounter significant structural inequities impacting their advancement.
• Existing strategies to address inequity often rely on urgency, solutionism, and top-down leadership.
• There is a need for alternative frameworks to reconstruct just systems post-dismantling of unjust policies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce Design Justice as a counternarrative to current approaches for addressing inequity in medicine.
• To explore the principles of Design Justice and their application in creating more equitable systems.
• To prompt critical reflection among medical educators, scholars, and leaders regarding justice and design.

Main Methods:

• Exploration of Design Justice's historical roots in critical scholarship and critical design.
• Analysis of Design Justice principles: mutual accountability, co-ownership, community-led outcomes, and honoring Indigenous knowledge.
• Examination of Design Justice applications across various sectors, with a focus on educational contexts.

Main Results:

• Design Justice provides a set of guiding principles that center marginalized experiences and perspectives.
• The principles of Design Justice critically examine power dynamics inherent in design processes.
• Design Justice offers practical guardrails for progress toward justice, rooted in critical theory.

Conclusions:

• Design Justice offers a robust framework for dismantling structural inequities in medicine.
• Applying Design Justice principles can lead to the development of more equitable and community-centered medical systems.
• This approach encourages a critical re-evaluation of power structures and knowledge systems within medical education.