"Race-Disability Intersectionality as a Health Equity Imperative" The Pike Lecture featuring Professor Mary Crossley, University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Black people and people with disabilities in the United States are distinctively disadvantaged in their encounters with the health care system. These groups also share harsh histories of medical experimentation, eugenic sterilizations, and health care discrimination. Increasingly discussions of health equity call for intersectional approaches to understanding and addressing health disparities and other forms of health injustice. The intersection of minoritized racial identity and disability, however, has received little sustained attention in the health justice literature, notwithstanding that intersection’s commonness. This lecture draws on the concept of emergent disability (disability that is the result of unjust social structures) to explore the importance of intersectional perspectives in health justice scholarship and advocacy. Asserting the value of cross-movement collaborations in pursuing reforms to advance health equity for Black and disabled people, the lecture highlights how such reforms offer value for the health of Americans broadly.