The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs

This thesis argues that the norm of health equity has not yet been fully institutionalized into policy or practice in US domestic health policy. This is substantiated by a historical survey of the evolution of the norm in US health policy and by an analysis of prioritysetting documents and statements from the Department of Health and Human Services. While health equity as desegregation was successfully internalized into policy and practice during the Civil Rights Era, health equity as reducing disparities in health access and outcomes for all racial and ethnic groups has yet to be fully internalized into either policy or practice. A lack of prioritization of this issue on the part of DHHS, and interventions which largely target individual behavior change instead of community and societal-level initiatives to improve access to medical services, both constitute barriers to further progress towards the institutionalization of the norm. The thesis concludes with a proposal for a "restart" of the norm evolution process which emphasizes health equity framed in terms of human rights and the international health equity obligations of the US as a State Party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.