Occupational therapists’ perceptions of the need to enact health promotion in community development through occupational justice

Abstract

Introduction: Social determinants of health underlie and contribute to health inequalities. Stigma, poverty, and unequal access to health care are examples of social determinants that affect people’s well-being and participation in society. Although occupational therapists use occupation to promote health and wellbeing, they rarely consider how to address the reduction of health inequalities in their practice. Objective: The study aimed to explore how occupational therapists perceive the need to enact health promotion in community development through occupational justice. Method: Following critical participatory action research principles, group discussions were conducted by six professionals from across France. Occupational justice frameworks and public health reports were used to prompt a group dialogue over four months. A content analysis of the discussion was conducted, guided by the theory of practice architectures to understand how the therapists’ practices were shaped by discursive, economic, and socio-political circumstances. Results: Four themes reflected the professional needs to undertake community development: ‘the professional skills needed to enact the community’s own know-how and self-expertise’, ‘the importance of seeing the ‘whole’ picture and reaching out to other sectors’, ‘the need for occupational justice to understand the complexity of community development’, and ‘the need to move beyond body functions in education’. Conclusion: Community development offers unique opportunities to work in the complex context of everyday living. Reasoning informed by occupational justice concepts enables occupational therapists to consider health outcomes caused by social determinants. Occupational therapy education must train students for complex reasoning on how occupational injustices are rooted in everyday social contexts.