Social justice in pandemic preparedness

Pandemic influenza planning in the United States violates the demands of social justice in 2 fundamental respects: it embraces the neutrality of procedural justice at the expense of more substantive concern with health disparities, thus perpetuating a predictable and preventable social injustice, and it fails to move beyond lament to practical planning for alleviating barriers to accessing care. A pragmatic social justice approach, addressing both health disparities and access barriers, should inform pandemic preparedness. Achieving social justice goals in pandemic response is challenging, but strategies are available to overcome the obstacles. The public engagement process of one state's pandemic ethics project influenced the development of these strategies.