Kaweesi, Connie

Summary: "Unequal access to health care is a problem in Canada much studied by journalists, academics, and policy makers. There is a growing recognition that existing theories on, and approaches to, health inequities are limited in their ability to capture how these inequities are produced through changing, co-constituted, and intersecting effects of multiple forms of oppression. Intersectionality offers itself as a research paradigm capturing the complexities of illness and care, and this volume brings together Canadian activists, community-based researchers, and scholars from a range of disciplines to apply interpretations of intersectionality to cases in Indigenous health, mental health, migration health, community health, and organizational governance. By addressing specific health issues including cardiovascular disease, dementia, post-traumatic stress disorder, diabetes, and violence, this book advances methodological applications of intersectionality in health research, policy, and practice. The authors ultimately reveal how multiple variables are influencing health and healing in Canada -- not simply race, class, and gender but also age, religion, geography and place, and the state of the economy. Most importantly, it demonstrates that health inequities cannot be understood or addressed without the interrogation of power and diverse social locations and structures that shape lives and experiences of health."--Provided by publisher.

The chapter, "Living an ethical agreement: negotiating confidentiality and harm in feminist participatory action research" was written by the listed authors including Colleen Reid (Douglas College Faculty). Feminist community research is a collaborative, policy-oriented methodology that holds the promise of empowering the disadvantaged and building a more just society. But in the absence of critical analysis and the responsible use of power, this approach can lead to naive or even harmful practices. Grounded as they are in fieldwork, the interdisciplinary case studies in this volume acknowledge the real methodological and ethical issues that researchers can encounter as they negotiate contested research relationships. The authors discuss the strategies — successful and unsuccessful — that they have employed to overcome these challenges. The authors’ collective experiences working with diverse groups, from immigrant and Aboriginal women in Vancouver to poverty-reduction practitioners in Vietnam, reveal that truly equitable research projects require that we question core concepts and address crucial issues such as the promises and limits of reflexivity; the politics of place, time, and resources; ethical dilemmas and emotional responses; and the way issues of social justice, policy, and social change are embedded in research. ­-- From publisher description.