Social Justice, Coursework Example

What would you tell this person in order to communicate the social justice perspective and values to this market-justice leader in the community?
Just as he is a market justice supporter, public health professionals are also interested in market justice in relation to public health concerns and issues. “A core insight of social justice is that there are multiple causal pathways to numerous dimensions of disadvantage” (Gostin & Powers, 2006, p. 1054). With this said, one key principle of the social justice perspective for public health is that we continue to seek ways to reduce the negative impact that these multiple causal pathways have on placing a disadvantage to the public. Such disadvantages include poverty, lack of resources, lack of education, poor housing, unclean and polluted environments just to name a few. Therefore, it is important for public health professionals to work as problem solvers against these causal factors that work to place a disadvantage on the public health for persons within the community. This is what we do. This is what we are all about. These are our values.

Identify and discuss 2–3 of the principles you learned from this week’s Learning Resources on influencing others and surviving as a leader that you would want to apply in this scenario.

One key principle on influencing others as a leader that I learned in this week’s Learning Resources is that it is important to become an effective communicator. This involves identifying the problems that the individual(s) are facing, find effective solutions and then be able to communicate these solutions in a manner that they can be understood and implemented by the appropriate parties. Effective communication is a key component to influencing others and surviving as a leader. Finally, Heifetz and Linsky (2003) discuss the importance of leading and in within this discussion they develop a key principle that the leader must be able to place selfish desires behind the needs of the individuals that the person is leading. In order to survive as a leader, we must work for the benefit of others first and seek the benefit of ourselves second – sometimes this can be a very arduous task!

Bibliography

Gostin, L. O., & Powers, M. (2006). What does social justice require for the public’s health? public health ethics and policy imperatives: Social justice demands more than fair distribution of resources in extreme public health emergencies. Health Affairs, 25(4), 1053-1060.

Heifetz, R. A., & Linsky, M. (2003). A survival guide for leaders. Business Credit, 44-52.