Purpose: This paper explores perspectives on social justice, equity and agency when schools address health, wellbeing and sustainability challenges. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws on a literature review of educational research. The analysis is narrative, highlighting how binary conceptions of equity, social justice and agency are…

Intersectionality theory examines how matrices of power and interlocking structures of oppression shape and influence people's multiple identities. It reminds us that people's lives cannot be explained by taking into account single categories, such as gender, race, sexuality, or socio-economic status. Rather, human lives are multi-dimensional and…

Purpose: Government's role and sex education are vital in promoting inclusivity and sexual health. To understand the impact that the legislation has had on sex education, it is necessary to evaluate it at the different training levels. Design/methodology/approach: The method used is a critical review aimed at comparing educational and state…

The purpose of this article is to put racism on the health and physical education (HPE) agenda with accountability measures using a critical whiteness lens. For HPE professionals, a critical whiteness lens involves examining beliefs that white cultural norms in HPE are conventional and benefit those who do not identify as white or with white…

Background: Issues of social justice require the understanding and intervention of teachers across all subject areas. Teachers must be positioned to uphold fairness for all individuals in their classes while considering the disparities of wealth, opportunities, and social privileges that may impact the student experience. This paper explores the…

This paper draws on critical discourse analysis to examine how health and physical education (HPE) curricula from Sweden, Norway, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand may influence possibilities for the enactment of social justice in schools. The findings highlight the presence of social justice intentions across the five curricula as related…

Objective: To explore the perspectives and practices of high school health education teachers implementing health literacy with a focus on the social determinants of health within the context of a concern for social justice. Design: Qualitative content analysis was used to assess high school teachers' accounts of the practices used to teach health…

Background: Weight stigma and bias are present in education, employment, and health care institutions, and have increased in recent years. College students in pre-health majors have been documented to hold weight biases, and interventions to mitigate these beliefs have had varying results. Objectives: This study's purpose was to assess the impact…

Nationally recognized social justice standards guide educators in developing social justice education. Absent from the guidance are tools to conduct initial formative assessment or to measure the impact of related instruction. To fill that gap, an academic researcher and 10th-grade teacher used a 3-phased, 9-step process to develop, pilot test,…

For decades, marginalized communities have been naming the harms of policing--and the systemic racism that undergirds it--for health and well-being. Only recently have policing practices and racism within policing gained more widespread attention in public health. Building on social justice and emancipatory traditions in health education, we argue…

The diversity of racial/ethnic representation in the health services and policy research (HSPR) workforce plays a crucial role in addressing the health needs of underserved populations. We assessed changes (between 2012 and 2022) in the racial/ethnic composition of students and faculty from departments of Health Policy & Management (HPM) and…

New Zealand and Australia introduced health and physical education curricula espousing a socially-critical perspective more than two decades ago. Yet, despite growth in advocacy and teaching resources, there is little research exploring how HPE teachers are enacting these pedagogies. This article addresses the challenge of understanding what six…

Critical health literacy (CHL) and more specifically the development of young people's CHL in school-based health education is an under-explored area in research. This is despite health literacy being viewed as a critical determinant of health in contemporary times (World Health Organization. (2016a). The mandate for health literacy.…

This article discusses the characteristics of a donor-funded internship program for undergraduate students interested in reproductive rights, health, and justice at Tulane University's Newcomb Institute. It describes the results of a preliminary study of this program's outcomes and makes recommendations for program improvements. This article will…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to share the experience of delivering a culturally responsive teaching program, the R.E.F.O.R.M. Café, at a historically Black college and university. The R.E.F.O.R.M. Café provided an opportunity for undergraduate students to participate in dialogue that reinforces the need for social justice in preserving…