Intersectionality research in action: Factoring in social, cultural and environmental contexts in examining burden of disease

Workshop on “Learning to do health equity research addressing multiple axes of inequalities”

13th -14th August 2015, Trivandrum.

Organised by:

ACHUTHA MENON CENTRE FOR HEALTH SCIENCE STUDIES

Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Technology, Trivandrum

 

We opened this presentation using the deaths on the Titanic to explore the determinants of mortality and the intersections of Class and Gender. (Slides 3-9)

We then turned our attention to the notion of health and wellbeing.  Slide 11 shows an apparently happy young girl, who shows signs of the protein nutritional deficit Kwashiokor.

We then discussed the Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) as presented in the early to mid 2000s and issues with the idea of considering disability without proper regard to the context in which the life is lived. Slides 13-21

A study conducted by us (DDR, PA, and colleagues) in the early 2000s comparing Epilepsy and Paraplegia in Australia and Cameroon were discussed. Slides 22-48  The principal research may be found on pubmed here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=reidpath+allotey+daly

The need for mixed methods ("Intersectionality of Methods") was discussed as a means of properly capturing the burden of disease.  Slide 53

Slide 54 Introduced other work by us (DDR, PA, and colleagues) looking at notions of intersectionality.See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=reidpath+allotey+pox