Structural competency

Jonathan Metzl, an American psychiatrist, professor, and writer, and Helena Hansen, an American psychiatrist, professor, and anthropologist wrote the article, “Structural competency: Theorizing a new medical engagement with stigma and inequality” in which this definition of structural competency was developed. Metzl and Hansen describe medical structural competency as a “trained ability to discern how a host of issues” including social determinants define “symptoms, attitude, or attitudes” that patients may possess impact treatment. Both, alongside other structural competence advocates believe that structural competency is integral to the training of physicians in their service to others as oftentimes, social determinants of health issues are overlooked as the sources of problems. Instead blame is typically put on the individual for their contribution to their own poor health.