August 21, 2013

Jonathan Purtle, a doctoral candidate in the Drexel University School of Public Health's Department of Health Management & Policy and staff member of the school’s Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice, recently published a paper titled “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Post-Disaster Mental Health: Examining the Evidence through a Lens of Social Justice.” The paper, which was published in the Washington & Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice, explores research on racial and ethnic disparities in post-disaster mental health from a social justice perspective in an effort to provide “a foundation for empirical research on the macro-level determinants of mental health outcomes in disasters, and identify policy priorities to promote social justice.”

The author suggests that those concerned with post-disaster mental health should engage in interdisciplinary research and integrate the best science available to better understand how social inequalities might become manifest in adverse mental health outcomes after disasters, highlighting the moral urgency for action. The author also emphasizes that it is of critical importance that characteristics of race and ethnicity do not become disembodied from the broader social forces that give them meaning.