"The book would be a worthwhile addition to any collection on cultural competency; diversity, equity, and inclusion; public health; social determinants of health; or health professions education. Hansen and Metzl's Structural Competency in Mental Health and Medicine: A Case Based Approach to Treating the Social Determinants of Health will, I hope, inspire further development and implementation of structural competency perhaps involving collaborations with health sciences libraries and librarians." (Gregory Laynor, Journal of the Medical Library Association, Vol. 109 (2), April, 2021)
Introduction
The promise of structural competency and how to promote it
Helena Hansen and Jonathan Metzl
This introduction will describe the concept of structural competency, its motivation, goals, and approach.
Cases of Structural Competency In Action
I: Classroom and in-clinic structural intervention
Jonathan Metzl: Vanderbilt's pre-health curriculum in structural racism
Seth Holmes and Kelly Knight: UCSF/UC Berkeley structural competency curriculum and Rad Med actions
Philippe Bourgois and Joel Braslow: UCLA social medicine program and MD-Ph.D. training in the social sciences
Jeremy Greene: Johns Hopkins curriculum in science and society
Edgar Rivera Colon and Sayantani DasGupta: The Columbia Narrative Medicine Program and narrative humility
II: Community collaborations
Helena Hansen: NYU public psychiatry in residency training
as clinical engagement with communities
Jack Geiger: Community health assessments at Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education
Michael Montoya: Knowing your place structurally: Lessons from The University of California PRIME program.
Sue Estroff: Community members and peers as medical school instructors at UNC
Robert Rohrbaugh: Yale School of Medicine's curriculum in the community
Kamini Doobay: NYC Coalition to Dismantle Racism in the Health System - the product of medical student leadership/White Coats for Black Lives
III: Non-health sectors
Mindy Fullilove: diagnosing and treating racially fractured cities - urban (re)design as health intervention
Jack Saul: collective recovery through community organizations and schools in a time of racial/ethnic trauma
Mallory Curran: Medical-legal partnerships: advocacy with landlords, entitlement programs and in courts
IV: Policy Advocacy
E
rnie Drucker and Gary Belkin: From Punishment to Public Health: multidisciplinary collaborations to divert people from arrest to mental health care
Alethia Jones: Healthcare worker unions as agents of change - the story of 1199
Julie Netherland: Physicians as advocates at the Drug Policy Alliance
Helena Hansen MD, PhD Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Anthropology, New York University, NY, NY
Jonathan Metzl, MD, PhD Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Medicine, Health, and Society Professor of Psychiatry Vanderbilt University 300 Calhoun Hall Nashville, TN
This book documents the ways that clinical practitioners and trainees have used the “structural competency” framework to reduce inequalities in health. The essays describe on-the-ground ways that clinicians, educators, and activists craft structural interventions to enhance health outcomes, student learning, and community organizing around issues of social justice in health and healthcare. Each chapter of the book begins with a case study that illuminates a competency in reorienting clinical and public health practice toward community, institutional and policy level intervention based on alliances with social agencies, community organizations and policy makers. Written by authors who are trained in both clinical and social sciences, the chapters cover pedagogy in classrooms and clinics, community collaboration, innovative health promotion approaches in non-health sectors and in public policies, offering a view of effective care as structural intervention and a road map toward its implementation.
Structural Competency in Mental Health and Medicine is a cutting-edge resource for psychiatrists, primary care physicians, addiction medicine specialists, emergency medicine specialists, nurses, social workers, public health practitioners, and other clinicians working toward equality in health.