ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Justice is so central to the mission of public health that it has been described as the field's core value. This account of justice stresses the fair disbursement of common advantages and the sharing of common burdens. It captures the twin moral impulses that animate public health: to advance human well-being by improving health and to do so particularly by focusing on the needs of the most disadvantaged. This Commentary explores how social justice sheds light on major ongoing controversies in the field, and it provides examples of the kinds of policies that public health agencies, guided by a robust conception of justice, would adopt. [Health Affairs 25, no. 4 (2006): 1053-1060; 10.1377/hlthaff .25.4.1053]
Lorry Gostin (gostin@law.gcorgctawn.edu) is associate dean and aprofessor at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C; director of the university's Center for Law and the Public's Health; and a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. MaJison Powers is director and senior research scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, and an associate professor in its Department of Philosophy.
