According to Kara Mannor, MPH ‘21 and Ph.D. Student in Epidemiology at the University of Michigan, historically, public health campaigns promoted fear of disabled people and research agendas that deems disabled individuals as broken. This approach to disability is what disability studies scholars and disabled activists have come to call the medical model of disability. The social model of disability, first formally noted by social work scholar and activist Mike Oliver moves away from the medical model by distinguishing between bodily impairments that individuals experience and disabling environments. Mannor further outlines the differences between the two through personal accounts in the article.
