Diverse Populations Midterm Study Notes

Flashcards covering key definitions, theories, and exam scaffolds for BNUR 3004: Diverse Populations Midterm, including Determinants of Health, Health EquiTree, Cycle of Oppression, Five Faces of Oppression, Critical Social Theory, Intersectionality, Feminist Theory, and advocacy levels.

According to Raphael et al. (2020), how are Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) defined?

The conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age.

What are Structural Determinants of Health, and what are key examples?

Macro-level governance, cultural ideologies, and economic models that generate, distribute, and enforce hierarchies. Examples include neoliberalism / market-driven policy, colonialism (historical & ongoing), white privilege, patriarchy, pancapitalism, and systemic isms (racism, classism, ableism).

What are Ecological Determinants of Health?

Natural / biophysical systems essential to survival, including pollution & ecotoxicity, resource depletion, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, and species / biodiversity loss.

How are "social murder" and "slow violence" defined?

Social murder refers to political and economic conditions that inevitably lead to premature, preventable deaths among oppressed classes. Slow violence refers to delayed, incremental, out-of-sight destruction over time (e.g., environmental toxicity, economic abandonment).

What are the four layers of the Health EquiTree from top to bottom, and what does each contain?

1. Canopy / Leaves — Outcomes (Manifest illness: cancer, COPD, depression, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, injuries, falls); 2. Branches — Behaviours / proximal (Substance use, social connections or absence, smoking, chronic stress, poor diet, lack of exercise); 3. Trunk — Living conditions (Community social environment, education, built environment, employment conditions, violence / trauma, housing access & quality); 4. Roots & Soil — Structures (Distribution of resources, poverty, racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, heterosexism, xenophobia, religious prejudice, institutional barriers).

How does the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health (NCCDH) define health equity?

All people have a fair chance to reach their full health potential and are not disadvantaged by social, economic, or environmental conditions.

What are the one-line distinctions between Inequality, Equality, Equity, and Justice?

Inequality: Disproportionate, asymmetric access to resources and life opportunities (the problem, described). Equality: Identical resources / tools / help for everyone, regardless of disadvantage or need (same for all). Equity: Custom, targeted resources to address specific historical and social imbalances (different, based on need). Justice: Dismantle the structural barriers / fix the system itself, so no special accommodation is needed (remove the barrier).

How do the Charity paradigm and Social justice paradigm contrast across Community, Action, and Result?

Community: Charity views the community as a passive recipient of aid, whereas Social justice views it as an active, collaborative partner. Action: Charity focuses on direct, transactional relief targeting visible symptoms, whereas Social justice focuses on systemic intervention, advocacy, and social movements targeting root causes. Result: Charity can foster ongoing dependence, whereas Social justice builds community empowerment.

What are the four steps of the Cycle of Oppression in order, and how is each defined?

1. Stereotype: Exaggerated, oversimplified, fixed mental image / negative generalization held by individuals, groups, or systems. 2. Prejudice: Biased way of thinking / subjective evaluation based on stereotypes; embedded in and reinforced by ruling relations and structural power. 3. Discrimination: Actions or deliberate inactions grounded in prejudice (individual and collective). 4. Oppression: Systemic, institutionalized discrimination backed by systemic power, structural violence, and ruling relations.

What are Iris Marion Young's Five Faces of Oppression and their definitions?

Exploitation: Systematic transfer of the energies / fruits of one group's labour to another, without equitable compensation (labour taken for profit). Marginalization: Expulsion of a whole group from meaningful participation in social / economic life; material deprivation (shut out). Violence: Members of a targeted group live with unceasing threat of attack, harassment, or violation because of group identity (living under threat). Powerlessness: Capacity for self-determination is inhibited; dominated and directed by a ruling class (no voice, no authority). Cultural Imperialism: Dominant group's experience/culture is universalized as the norm; other cultures are made invisible or stereotyped as inferior (dominant culture = 'normal').

What are the definitions of Visible, Hidden, and Invisible/Internalized power?

Visible power: Formal, institutional power (laws, courts, explicit policies, public decision-making bodies). Hidden power: Control behind closed doors, where dominant interests set the agenda and exclude issues or groups from debate. Invisible / Internalized power: Psychological / ideological control that shapes norms and worldviews, causing oppressed people to internalize inferiority or accept subjugation as natural, fortunate, or unalterable.

How do Vulnerable, Marginalized, Under-served, and Resilience differ from one another?

Vulnerable: Objective susceptibility to physical, emotional, or social harm, defined by statistical risk probabilities. Marginalized: Social isolation / peripheralization of people categorized as 'the other'; systemic underrepresentation and invalidation. Under-served: A failure of systems to provide adequate resources / services, shifting focus from individual pathology to structural service gaps. Resilience: Abilities + resources + ecological factors that let individuals / communities withstand, navigate, and overcome systemic adversity (conceptual opposite of vulnerability).

What is autonomy as defined in the course notes?

Legal, moral, and psychological capacity to act on one's own behalf and direct one's own life; requires seeing oneself as a bearer of power and self-direction.

What are the three forms of empowerment identified in the course notes?

Patient empowerment: The person sees themself as an active, core member of the care team — partners with providers, prepares questions, demands quality, and holds providers accountable. Personal / psychological empowerment: Internal self-worth, perceived mastery, proactive engagement, and critical awareness of sociopolitical systems. Community empowerment: Disadvantaged populations organizing collectively to expand democratic control over decisions, resources, and institutions that affect their lives.

What are the three criteria every Critical Social Theory (CST) analysis must satisfy?

1. Explanatory: Answers what is flawed, unjust, and destructive in the current social reality. 2. Practical: Answers who — which agents, groups, and institutional levers — can actually enact transformational change. 3. Normative: Answers what defensible ethical norms guide the critique, and what realistic, achievable goals for liberation follow.

In Critical Social Theory (CST), how do the Privileged cohort and Disadvantaged cohort operate?

Privileged cohort: Unified, structurally powerful, self-interested; uses institutional power to protect advantages, dictates dominant cultural reality, and exploits marginalized populations. Disadvantaged cohort: Fractured, disempowered, barred from full potential; coerced into dominant norms, internalizes dominant consciousness, and manipulated into complicity with own oppression.

What is Intersectionality, who originated the term, and what quote illustrates it?

Originated by Kimberlé Crenshaw, it is the concept that systems of power, privilege, and marginalization collide, interlock, and intersect rather than operating as separate, independent variables. Audre Lorde quote: "There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not lead single-issue lives."

What core lesson does the "Bob the Stripey Blue Triangle" analogy illustrate?

Oppressions are co-constituted and cannot be dismantled piecemeal; competing single-axis groups fail because individuals cannot partition their identities, oppression of one affects all, and there is no liberation without equal representation.

What are the core focuses of the four waves of feminism?

First wave: Political franchise (suffrage) and basic legal existence; 1929 Persons Case declared women legal persons. Second wave: 'Sisterhood is powerful'; systemic inequities including domestic labour, reproductive self-determination, sexual liberation, domestic violence, and workplace pay equity. Third wave: Decentralized, local consciousness-raising, sexual pluralism, welcoming men, work-life balance, and individual expression. Fourth wave: Rejection of a universal female experience; digital mobilization, anti-colonial paradigms, addressing global exploitation of racialized women, and anti-violence accountability.

What are the distinguishing claims of the branches of feminism discussed in the notes?

Radical feminism: Patriarchy is the root of all oppression, tied to the traditional nuclear family and male violence. Liberal feminism: All people are born equal; change occurs through equal education, legal modernization, and legislative reform to remove barriers. Socialist / social feminism: Women's oppression is economic dependence rooted in class-based capitalism; liberation requires dismantling class and racial, cultural, sexual hierarchies. Ecofeminism: Identifies parallels between the industrial domination of nature and patriarchal domination of women.

What actions should a nurse take at the Micro, Meso, and Macro advocacy levels?

Micro: Model trauma-informed, anti-racist, person-centred communication; challenge derogatory labelling ('frequent flyers') in real time at the bedside. Meso: Work with educators for mandatory cultural safety / implicit bias / anti-oppression training; establish clinical navigators linking patients to social supports. Macro: Through RNAO / CNA, advocate for expanded rural primary care funding, subsidized dental / pharmacare, and community-led health infrastructure.

What are the six principles of the CNO Code of Conduct (2026)?

1) Respect clients' dignity; 2) Inclusive, culturally safe care through cultural humility; 3) Safe, competent care; 4) Work respectfully with the team; 5) Act with integrity in clients' best interest; 6) Maintain public confidence in nursing.

How does a migrant worker saying, "Mr. Porter is such a busy and important man, we are so lucky he allows us to work here," illustrate Invisible Power and Exploitation?

It demonstrates invisible / internalized power because the worker rationalizes structural exploitation (unsafe hours, no primary care access) as employer benevolence. It represents exploitation because the employer profits from the workers' labour without providing equitable compensation or essential healthcare access.