‘Structural humility’ and ‘socio-professional activism’ – adding to the equity lexicon for practitioners
[Estimated reading time: 6mins] During my research and praxis over the years I have sometimes struggled to articulate with brevity some of the fundamental characteristics that practitioners should strive to embody if they aim to contribute to positive social change in healthcare and education. This led me to proposing, in late 2021 on twitter , ‘ structural humility ’ and ‘ socio-professional activism ’ as two new terms that may contribute to thinking and action towards social justice. In this blog I explain things in a little more detail… Firstly, let’s look at this quote from a recent research paper entitled ‘ Physical pain, gender, and the state of the economy in 146 nations ’: “ Economic worry can create physical pain.. .[its level] in a nation depends on the state of the economy. Pain is high when the unemployment rate is high. That is not because of greater pain among people who lose their jobs - it extends far beyond that into wider society …[and the] increase in phys