Encountering Expertise in Intersectional Health: Addressing Inequities in Women's and Children's Health

The Encountering Expertise in Intersectional Health Series is jointly organized by UAlberta's Women and Children’s Health Research Institute and the Intersections of Gender Signature Area. In four sessions, panelists from health sciences, social sciences, and humanities come together to provide introductory, theoretical and methodological, applied, and grant-oriented information about how health research and researchers do, can, and should use an intersectional lens for more dynamic, informative, and impactful research.

Addressing Inequities in Women's and Children's Health

Health and social inequities exist across the globe, including Canada. The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the need to consider the impact of intersectional social locations on health and social outcomes. For example, racialized women are multiply impacted by the pandemic due to intersectional influences of gender and race. Intersectionality considers how multiple intersecting locations including race, gender, and income can intersect to contribute to experiences and outcomes. The presentation will begin with basic information about intersectionality, including the history of intersectional theoretical perspective. We will discuss how intersectionality has been used in health and social service research and practice as it relates to women and children.

In this session, you will gain a basic understanding of intersectionality, including the history of intersectional theoretical perspectives. The session will also introduce and discuss how intersectionality has been used in health and social service research and practice as it relates to women and children.

This session meets requirements for the Canadian Child Health Clinician Scientist Program (CCHCSP) training curriculum.

Panelists

Susanne Luhmann

Susanne Luhmann is Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Alberta. From 2018 to 2020, she was the inaugural Director of Intersections of Gender, Signature Area of Research and Teaching at the University of Alberta, Office of the Vice President (Research and Innovation). She has teaching and research interests related to the institutionalization of intersectional gender studies and research; feminist and queer pedagogies, trauma and cultural memory; and sexuality studies.

Her research has been published in the UK, Germany, Turkey, the US, and Canada in journals such as Jahrbuch Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung in der Erziehungswissenschaft, Topia, Atlantis, Yearbook of Women in German, and New German Critique, as well as in many book chapters. Together with Amber Dean and Jennifer Johnson, Luhmann co-edited Feminist Praxis Revisited: Critical Reflections on University-Community Engagement (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2019). She is co-author of Troubling Women’s Studies: Pasts, Presents, Possibilities (Sumach Press, 2004).

Denise L. Spitzer

A critical feminist medical anthropologist, Denise L. Spitzer PhD, is a Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta and an Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa, where, from 2005-2015, she was the Canada Research Chair in Gender, Migration and Health and a Principal Scientist in the Institute of Population Health. In addition to undergraduate studies in Biology, Chinese Language, and Music, she holds a Master’s degree and doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Alberta. Engaging in participatory research with migrant communities around the world, Dr. Spitzer is interested in examining how global processes, mediated through intersectionality, are implicated in health and wellbeing and experienced and expressed at the level of the body. Her current program of research focuses on the impact of the global economy and multiple levels of policy-making on immigrants, migrants and refugees in different parts of the globe, most notably Southeast and East Asia, Canada, and the Horn of Africa, and engages with critical perspectives of the body, transnationalism and constructions of identity. She is the recipient of 31 research grants as principal investigator and 38 as co-investigator, and experience facilitating numerous multinational and multilingual participatory research projects. Professor Spitzer has published in journals such as Gender & Society, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, and the Canadian Journal of Public Health. Her edited collection, Engendering Migrant Health: Canadian Perspectives (University of Toronto Press, 2011) was cited as one of the best policy books of 2011 by the Hill Times and was awarded a WGSRF Outstanding Scholarship citation by the Women’s and Gender Studies Association in 2013.

Bukola Salami

Bukola Salami is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta and the current Director at the Intersections of Gender Signature Area. Her research program focuses on policies and practices shaping migrants’ health and has been involved in about 80 funded research projects. She is the lead on around 30 of these projects with funding from national and international agencies. She has led research projects on vaccine confidence among Black Canadians, COVID-19 disinformation among Black Canadians, African immigrant child health, immigrant mental health, access to healthcare for immigrant children, Black youth mental health, international nurse migration, immigrant child mental health, the experiences of live-in caregivers and care recipients, the experiences of temporary foreign workers, internally displaced people, and parenting practices of African immigrants. She has around 80 published scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals (with another 15 under review), 2 book chapters, and 8 reports. She is an Associate Editor for the Canadian Medical Association Journal and also a member of the advisory board of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research Institutes for Human Development, Child and Youth Health.