Health and Power Organizing Project (HPOP)

The Health and Power Organizing Project (HPOP) is a group of racial and health equity scholars and leaders in public health, population health and related fields finding ways to forge relationships between academia and community organizing that build on our understandings of power. HPOP is working to accelerate changes within and outside the bounds of academia that can contribute to thriving people and places, such as innovating what we research and teach, how we hold ourselves accountable to the communities we are entrusted to serve, and how we transform educational institutions to utilize resources equitably. HPOP aims to organize and partner with people across community and academic settings who share these interests and create spaces where power-focused academics and applied researchers advance knowledge and practice that is accountable to community.

HPOP has worked to develop a shared analysis of the ecosystem of power within which academic public and population health exists and can strategically organize. We recognize that advancing health equity requires contesting power in (at least) two forms: (1) building power by cultivating the capacity of people who are disproportionately burdened, and who therefore have the most at stake; and (2) breaking power by weakening and destabilizing the societal, economic and political forces (or structural determinants) that perpetuate health inequity. We contend that power imbalances are the root of health inequities, whereby those with more power are able to maintain their advantages by wielding power through structural determinants, including policies, practices and culture within and outside the bounds of academia. Our analysis identifies ways in which power is wielded and structured within and across systemic, institutional, and individual levels and informs opportunities to contest power imbalances and build power to transform both academic fields and how the fields advance health equity in communities.  

To learn more about the how power plays a role in shaping opportunity and health check out these resources:

• Michener, J. (2022). Health justice through the lens of power. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 50(4), 656-662.
•  Heller, J. C., Givens, M. L., Johnson, S. P., & Kindig, D. A. (2024). Keeping It Political and Powerful: Defining the Structural Determinants of Health. The Milbank Quarterly.
• Petteway, R. J. (2023). On epidemiology as racial-capitalist (re) colonization and epistemic violence. Critical Public Health, 33(1), 5-12.
• Heller, J. C., Fleming, P. J., Petteway, R. J., Givens, M., & Pollack Porter, K. M. (2023). Power up: a call for public health to recognize, analyze, and shift the balance in power relations to advance health and racial equity. American journal of public health, 113(10), 1079-1082.