ABSTRACT
Applied to social and behavioral science (SBS) critical health equity research, intersectionality, with its attention to power and interlocking power relations (e.g., racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, cisgenderism, and ableism), aligns well with growing advocacy for more structural approaches to health and health equity. Structural approaches are those that transcend individual-level factors to highlight how social, economic, and political factors facilitate and hinder health outcomes for individuals, communities, and societies. Building on Metzl and Hansen’s (2014) structural competency paradigm for medical trainees as a foundation, I advance ten intersectional structural competencies for SBS researchers who use intersectionality as a critical analytical framework for health equity research: (1) recognize structures and interlocking oppressive social-structures that shape health inequities; (2) cultivate cross-disciplinary learning about structure and intersecting social-structural inequality; (3) develop intersectional structural humility; (4) resist identity-only conceptualizations of intersectionality; (5) collect demographic data to facilitate intersectional analyses; (6) rearticulate demographics in terms of structure and the social-structural inequality they implicate; (7) examine structural racism as a core determinant of intersectional health inequities; (8) measure intersectional discrimination structurally; (9) measure, analyze, and interpret data on structure and intersecting social-structural inequality; and (10) observe and imagine intersectional structural interventions.
