Research
The social organization of health and long-term care.
With US health care spending reaching an estimated $4.8 trillion in 2023, the consequences for patients rest well beyond the medical encounter. At the HealthCare lab we use health care settings, institutions, and policies as terrains to understand the structural forces that underpin health care provision, the social processes that reproduce inequality among patients and providers, and how individuals interact within each and navigate broader systems of power and inequality.
The sociological study of medicine, nursing, and other health professions.
The study of the medical profession and its role in society has a long history in the sub-field of medical sociology. At the HealthCare lab we build on this history. In addition to traditional themes around medical socialization, (the professionalization of medical students and the transformation of lay persons into medical professionals), we center an understanding of other health professions and practitioners e.g. nursing, disability support.
The interdisciplinary study of paid care work
Care work research focuses on the caring work of individuals, families, communities, paid caregivers, social service agencies, and state bureaucracies. At the HealthCare lab we focus on paid care work that takes place in institutional settings such as hospitals, nursing homes, and other health and long-term care settings. We also investigate paid care work that occurs in home setting as mediated by institutions such as state-funded or subsidized recruitment and health care agencies. We explore issues such as how inequality based on gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other factors relates to caring; how caring work is organized and compensated; how various state welfare policies influence the distribution of care work; and how professional care workers make sense of their work and craft meanings and identity at work.
Other topics of interest
- Stratification and inequality in health and long term care
- Racialized and gendered hierarchies at work in acute and long-term care settings
- Paraprofessionals in health and long term care
- Meaning making and identities among health professionals
- COVID-19 and its impact on health and long term care
- The global migration of health professionals
- Health professions education in international and non-western contexts
- The study and practice of biomedicine in resource-deprived contexts
- Qualitative methodologies.