Sharpening our critical edge: Occupational therapy in the context of marginalized populations

Abstract

Background: An emerging and important area of occupational therapy practice involves engaging with various individuals and population groups who live in marginalizing conditions that result in health inequities.

Purpose: This paper calls for more critical and intersectional analyses of occupational therapy in the context of marginalized populations.

Key issues: Intersectionality has the potential to reveal important and complex interactions among social systems that create and sustain marginalization and to inform more nuanced, contextualized, and socially responsive forms of occupational therapy. Central to this process is the co-construction of knowledge with people who experience marginalization. Engaging in this work requires occupational therapists to undertake ongoing critical reflexivity to attend to our sociohistorical positioning of power and privilege in relation to marginalized populations.

Implication: Complicating our discourse on marginalized populations is imperative to enacting our critical potential in working toward social justice and health equity.