Medicine
Intersectionality in Health Policy and Program Design
Quick fact
Intersectionality shows that overlapping identities—like race, gender, and class—create unique experiences of health and discrimination that cannot be understood by examining each identity in isolation.
Why this is interesting
Imagine a health program that targets 'women' but fails to help a disabled woman of color. Why does a one-size-fits-all approach to identity miss the mark?
Read the full explanation
Understanding Intersectionality in Health Policy and Program Design
Think of your identity as a mosaic of different tiles: race, gender, income, disability, sexuality, and more. In public health, we often look at one tile at a time, designing programs for 'women' or 'low-income individuals'. But in reality, these tiles are not separate; they blend together to form a unique pattern. A Black woman with a disability faces different health challenges than a white woman without a disability, even though they share the 'woman' tile. Intersectionality is the lens that sees the whole mosaic, recognizing that the combination of tiles creates a new, distinct experience. It encourages us to ask: how do multiple aspects of a person's identity combine to shape their health risks, barriers, and needs?
A deeper explanation
At its core, intersectionality, a term coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, reveals that systems of power—like racism, sexism, classism, and ableism—do not operate independently. They interlock, creating compounded disadvantage or advantage. For example, a low-income immigrant woman might face barriers on multiple fronts: language barriers, lack of family leave, and racial discrimination in healthcare. Each barrier alone is a problem, but together they can create a vastly more difficult path to health than any single barrier would suggest. In policy design, this means that a program addressing only race might miss the unique struggles of women of color, and a program addressing only gender might overlook the specific needs of women with disabilities. Intersectionality compels policymakers to move beyond single-axis frameworks and consider how policies interact with overlapping identities. It shifts the focus from individual behaviors to structural factors, pushing for more inclusive data collection (e.g., disaggregated by multiple demographics), community involvement, and targeted interventions that address the root causes of health inequities.