Intersectionality offers a powerful lens for understanding how multiple systems of power shape inequities across the cancer continuum. However, its empirical application often remains descriptive, identifying who is disadvantaged without clarifying how inequities are produced, through which mechanisms they operate, or where action should occur. This article addresses this gap through a conceptual framework analysis of 77 intersectionality-informed cancer studies, from which the Intersectional Categorical Influences Framework (ICIF) is developed. Following Jabareen’s approach, the literature was treated as a conceptual dataset to identify and synthesize recurring concepts related to social categories, context, mechanisms, and consequences. The analysis showed that broad demographic categories are insufficient as explanatory units and are better understood as positions shaped by power relations, constraints, and enablers. Three recurring domains of influence were identified: Self-Mediated Characteristics (SMC), Micro-structural Constraints and Enablers (MICE), and Macro-structural Constraints and Enablers (MACE). Together, these findings informed the ICIF as a positional, layered, and relational framework for explaining how intersectional cancer inequities are produced. A worked example in nasopharyngeal carcinoma further demonstrates its utility in linking layered influences to mechanism-based, population-targeted strategies. The ICIF advances intersectionality-informed cancer equity research beyond descriptive disparity mapping toward explanatory and action-oriented inquiry.
Since the 2000s, the fight against obesity has shifted from promoting lifestyle changes to adopting more radical biomedical interventions, such as bariatric surgery, which has seen significant growth. This article explores how patients undergoing bariatric treatment either reject, embrace, or reinterpret medicalized views of obesity based on their evolving expectations of treatment. Drawing on 35 semi-structured interviews with patients from Quebec, it delves into their motivations for weight-loss surgery, their treatment expectations, and the resulting physical, identity, and social changes. The article demonstrates that the decision to undergo surgery is driven not only by the desire to improve health, but also to achieve a body that aligns with contemporary norms of ‘good’ citizenship. However, this pursuit of normalization comes with the ongoing management of the ambivalent effects of the treatment, reshaping the experience of illness and disability, as well as the patient’s responsibility for treatment success. By reframing biomedicalization not as a process of normalizing or optimizing bodies, but as one of shifting chronicity, the article highlights the contradictions inherent in the “surgicalization” of obesity and the limits of biocitizenship.
Obesity prevention has become a prominent public health priority in Portugal, yet policy responses continue to engage unevenly with the social conditions through which obesity is produced and distributed. This paper examines Portuguese obesity policy through an integrated sociological and epidemiological perspective, arguing that its limitations are fundamentally sociopolitical rather than technical. Drawing on sociological theories of embodiment, class, gender, stigma, and power, it conceptualises obesity as an embodied expression of social inequality rather than solely an outcome of individual behaviour. The paper has three interrelated aims: first, to examine how epidemiological and sociological perspectives conceptualise obesity and its determinants, and the implications of these perspectives for prevention policy in Portugal; second, to analyse how recent obesity policies frame responsibility and address structural determinants through their strategies and instruments; and third, to explore how class, gender, and stigma shape the implementation and effects of these policies, and how alternative sociological framings might support more equitable prevention. Using Portugal as a case study, the paper analyses how welfare arrangements, political dynamics, and institutional framings shape national obesity strategies, including recent regulatory and environmental interventions. While these policies signal a shift towards upstream action, dominant discourses still prioritise personal responsibility, often misaligned with the economic, temporal, and social realities that structure everyday practices, particularly among women and socioeconomically marginalised groups. The analysis shows that obesity-related stigma arises not simply from interpersonal attitudes, but from institutional and political processes that legitimise culpability narratives and depoliticise structural determinants of health. More equitable obesity prevention requires moving beyond technical policy instruments towards a Health in All Policies approach that challenges moralised framings of responsibility and addresses the broader social, economic, and political conditions shaping obesity risk and lived experience
Overweight and obesity, now at unprecedented prevalence levels, have become critical public health concerns and sources of intense societal debate. Traditional weight-centric approaches to obesity treatment emphasize weight reduction as the primary goal, but such strategies often yield short-term success, significant weight regain, and harmful psychological effects, including stigma and self-esteem damage. In contrast, weight-neutral models such as Health at Every Size (HAES) advocate for a paradigm shift toward reducing weight stigma, promoting holistic health metrics, and acknowledging the intersectional factors contributing to obesity, including socioeconomic, genetic, and environmental influences. While these approaches have made important strides in reshaping clinical communication and reducing provider bias, they do not fully address the structural and environmental barriers that prevent patients in larger bodies from accessing dignified care in the first place. This review examines obesity through a multidisciplinary lens, integrating perspectives from public health, disability studies, and fat activism, and argues that the social model of disability offers a necessary framework for addressing these structural inadequacies. The social model shifts focus from individual pathology to systemic barriers: inadequate medical equipment, hostile clinical environments, and institutional policies that assume bodies conform to narrow standards. By reframing obesity through this lens, healthcare systems can adopt universal design principles that accommodate diverse bodies as standard practice, reducing medical avoidance and improving health outcomes without requiring bodily modification as a prerequisite for care. This paper advocates for a shift from the medicalization of obesity toward recognition of the environmental and structural factors that restrict the participation and well-being of people in larger bodies, fostering more equitable, inclusive, and patient-centered approaches to public health.
Climate change has been identified as one of the most serious global threats to indigenous people around the world. It amplifies existing social, economic, environmental and health inequities. Climate-related disruptions, including extreme weather events, rising temperatures and biodiversity loss, pose daily challenges for indigenous people who rely on nature-based ecosystems for survival, culture and identity. Despite the challenges, indigenous communities actively resist and by drawing on traditional ecological knowledges (TEKs), community driven initiatives and grassroot activism. This paper describes examples of indigenous-led climate adaptation and highlights the urgent need for inclusive policy making that strengthens community resilience. Further studies must delve deeper into the relationship between indigenous knowledge and climate adaptation to better address the needs of the people. Thus, while addressing key themes like health and well-being, socio-cultural disruptions and structural inequalities, this study investigates how power relations and policy frameworks marginalize indigenous voices from climate decision-making. This literature search was operationalized using electronic and scientific databases covering publications from 2000 to 2026. Political ecology is used as the analytical lens to synthesize the reviewed literature, tracing how historical and structural power relations shape both climate-related health outcomes and indigenous adaptive responses. The review endeavors to create a systematic study on the intersection of climate change, indigenous health and political ecology and also highlights the critical role of indigenous knowledge to ensure environmental stability, indigenous health and social justice.
