Hotep's story: exploring the wounds of health vulnerability in the US.

Full Abstract

A wide variety of forms of domination has resulted in a highly heterogeneous health risk category, "the vulnerable." The study of health inequities sheds light on forces that generate, sustain, and alter vulnerabilities to illness, injury, suffering and death. This paper analyzes the case of a high-risk teen from a Boston ghetto that illuminates intersections between "race" and class in the construction of vulnerability in the US. Exploration of his "wounds" helps specify how large-scale social and cultural forces become embodied as individual experience of disparate health risk. The case demonstrates that health inequities would not occur if resources--employment, income, wealth, education, housing, profiling in the legal system, and health care--were more justly managed in keeping with standards outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Professional responses to the "wounds of vulnerability" may reveal important aspects of who we are and what our work as scholars, practitioners, and advocates must become.

Author information

Author/s: Fox, Ken (K);

Affiliation: Boston University School of Medicine, Division of General Pediatrics and Adolescent Center, Boston Medical Center, MA 02118, USA.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Case Reports; Journal Article; Review

Journal: Theoretical medicine and bioethics (Theor Med Bioeth), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-; vol 23 (issue 6) : pp 471-97

Dates: Created 2003/01/27; Completed 2003/02/21; Revised 2005/11/16;

PMID: 12546166, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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