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


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


RESULTS
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.


CONCLUSIONS
Complicating our discourse on marginalized populations is imperative to enacting our critical potential in working toward social justice and health equity.
Alison J
AJ
Gerlach
D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006801:Humans; D009788:Occupational Therapy; D012935:Social Justice; D062487:Social Marginalization