Theologizing Disability as Resistance to Medicalization
Sarah Barton, ThD, MS, OTR/L, BCP, Duke University
As Peter Conrad argues, medicalization constitutes the process by which nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical problems (2007). And while some aspects of disability experience may rightly be medicalized (such as pharmacological treatment of chronic pain or ongoing advanced airway assessment for someone living on a ventilator), the goods of disability identity, culture, and equal access are obscured or even erased when disability is overly medicalized. The well-documented economic, social, and political disparities experienced by disabled people are connected to this process of medicalization, where “people with disabilities become the object and target of professional discourse and practice” (Hayes & Hannold, 2007). In this way, medicalization fuels an understanding of disability as an individualized deficiency that requires curative intervention, or at the very least, medical treatment that helps disabled people approximate a “normal” body.
In this paper, I argue that this medicalization of disability, particularly in pre-clinical medical and health professions education, contributes to the perpetuation of widespread inaccessibility for disabled patients and clinicians, alongside a failure to imagine disability-inclusive futures. In response to these realities, I suggest how theological descriptions of disability in the Christian tradition provide a prophetic alternative that can orient medical and health care practitioners toward access and futures marked by disability justice. I illustrate how Christian theologies of disability might concretely transform spaces of medical and health professions education, through integration within educational initiatives foregrounding health humanities and patient panels.
In pre-clinical education, medicalized characterizations of disability emerge from a dearth of disability content within medical and health professions curricula (Seidel & Crowe, 2017). In this limited attention to disability, curricula typically reduce the totality of disability experience to a medically treatable condition, with limited or absent attention to social, cultural, political, and relational understandings of disability. Thus, it is not surprising that this education leads to overwhelmingly negative clinician attitudes toward patients with disability across ages and care settings (Iezzoni et al., 2021), significant disparities between clinician and disabled patient assessments of quality of life (Goering, 2008), and limited representation of disabled clinicians within the workforce (Nouri et al., 2021).
Academic institutions and professional organizations have advanced a variety of interventions to disrupt these negative effects of medicalization: expanding a focus on disability experience and ableism within curricula (Ankam et al., 2019), promoting disability cultural competence (Agaronnik et al., 2019), offering strategies to mitigate disability bias in clinical care (Healy & Kidia, 2023), and developing best practices related to disability and neurodivergent affirming care (Shear et al., 2025). With the efficacy of these efforts still unknown, the scope of medicalization’s effects in contemporary medicine for disabled patients and providers calls forth additional intervention.
Engagement with Christian theological work on disability offers an avenue of creative resistance to the over-medicalization of disability. Educators in pre-clinical settings can integrate these perspectives through existing interdisciplinary or health humanities initiatives, alongside classroom patient panels. Against medicalized conceptions of disability, the Christian religious tradition prophetically reconceptualizes the human experience of disability, emphasizing healing not only as cure or individualized intervention, but collective transformation (Fox, 2019). Disabled and non-disabled Christian theologians also conceptualize contingency, vulnerability, and disability as unsurprising aspects of being human (Creamer, 2009), unveiling institutional shortcomings related to inclusion, arguing instead for the necessity of disability justice (Raffety, 2022). Contemporary perspectives across Christian traditions reframe disability experience not as a “problem” that must be solved by medical or faith communities, but as a site for creatively and collectively reimagining what the future holds (Spies, 2020).
This paper will explore concrete examples of critically integrating perspectives on disability from the Christian tradition within health humanities educational initiatives, alongside patient panels, to displace medicalization as the primary perspective on disability in medical and health professions education. These educational interventions open space for the prophetic witness of the Christian tradition, alongside other underrepresented perspectives in religion and spirituality, to promote the disability-conscious formation of future clinicians.
In this paper, I argue that this medicalization of disability, particularly in pre-clinical medical and health professions education, contributes to the perpetuation of widespread inaccessibility for disabled patients and clinicians, alongside a failure to imagine disability-inclusive futures. In response to these realities, I suggest how theological descriptions of disability in the Christian tradition provide a prophetic alternative that can orient medical and health care practitioners toward access and futures marked by disability justice. I illustrate how Christian theologies of disability might concretely transform spaces of medical and health professions education, through integration within educational initiatives foregrounding health humanities and patient panels.
In pre-clinical education, medicalized characterizations of disability emerge from a dearth of disability content within medical and health professions curricula (Seidel & Crowe, 2017). In this limited attention to disability, curricula typically reduce the totality of disability experience to a medically treatable condition, with limited or absent attention to social, cultural, political, and relational understandings of disability. Thus, it is not surprising that this education leads to overwhelmingly negative clinician attitudes toward patients with disability across ages and care settings (Iezzoni et al., 2021), significant disparities between clinician and disabled patient assessments of quality of life (Goering, 2008), and limited representation of disabled clinicians within the workforce (Nouri et al., 2021).
Academic institutions and professional organizations have advanced a variety of interventions to disrupt these negative effects of medicalization: expanding a focus on disability experience and ableism within curricula (Ankam et al., 2019), promoting disability cultural competence (Agaronnik et al., 2019), offering strategies to mitigate disability bias in clinical care (Healy & Kidia, 2023), and developing best practices related to disability and neurodivergent affirming care (Shear et al., 2025). With the efficacy of these efforts still unknown, the scope of medicalization’s effects in contemporary medicine for disabled patients and providers calls forth additional intervention.
Engagement with Christian theological work on disability offers an avenue of creative resistance to the over-medicalization of disability. Educators in pre-clinical settings can integrate these perspectives through existing interdisciplinary or health humanities initiatives, alongside classroom patient panels. Against medicalized conceptions of disability, the Christian religious tradition prophetically reconceptualizes the human experience of disability, emphasizing healing not only as cure or individualized intervention, but collective transformation (Fox, 2019). Disabled and non-disabled Christian theologians also conceptualize contingency, vulnerability, and disability as unsurprising aspects of being human (Creamer, 2009), unveiling institutional shortcomings related to inclusion, arguing instead for the necessity of disability justice (Raffety, 2022). Contemporary perspectives across Christian traditions reframe disability experience not as a “problem” that must be solved by medical or faith communities, but as a site for creatively and collectively reimagining what the future holds (Spies, 2020).
This paper will explore concrete examples of critically integrating perspectives on disability from the Christian tradition within health humanities educational initiatives, alongside patient panels, to displace medicalization as the primary perspective on disability in medical and health professions education. These educational interventions open space for the prophetic witness of the Christian tradition, alongside other underrepresented perspectives in religion and spirituality, to promote the disability-conscious formation of future clinicians.