Strategies for Improving the Diversity of the Health Professions

Evaluates programs and strategies that were designed to increase the number of underrepresented African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos in the health professions in California. Includes recommendations

Ethics and Methods of Human Rights Work: Exploring Both Theoretical and Practical Approaches

This workshop will explore both theoretical and practical approaches to methodologies and ethics as it relates to human rights work. The goal of the workshop is to create a dynamic space that encourages participants to share and learn from our own experiences navigating the messiness of human rights ethics and methods. We specifically address formal education and systems and structures so that we may all design, do and teach research and practice related to human rights in a more critical and sustainable manner. We recognize the tensions of creating research, programs and advocacy that is seen as “legitimate” to educational and funding institutions in a way that centers, and privileges, the people involved rather than procedures. Our workshop askes: What might this look like? What are some of the fuzzy and messy realities and ethical challenges and how might we work through these? How do you teach this? Too often “human rights” is discussed of simply in terms of content, this workshop focuses on the doing of human rights work specifically the considerations, limitations and possibilities in terms of: conceptualization of academic and practical projects; formal ethics review boards; funding; pedagogy/teaching; data collection; working with interpreters/gatekeepers; and knowledge dissemination. By “human rights work” we are referring to human rights research, practice (i.e.: law and advocacy) as well as social services/provisions. All of us involved in this workshop teach courses related to human rights in a variety Canadian universities and are also engaged in practical, artistic and advocacy work. We come from a variety of disciplines (anthropology, criminology, international relations, communications/sociology and social work) and embrace our transdisciplinarity. This, plus our, praxis-based reality affects our approach to ethics and methods of human rights work

The development and initial evaluation of the Diarrhoea Management Diary (DMD) in patients with metastatic breast cancer

Purpose Chemotherapy-induced diarrhoea (CID) is a common, but often underreported problem in patients with breast cancer that has a profound effect on quality of life. It is best measured from a patient’s perspective, but tools are limited. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate the Diarrhoea Management Diary (DMD), a self-report measure to assess CID, use of self-management strategies and treatment adherence. Methods The DMD was constructed using an iterative process of instrument development: concept elicitation (literature review), item generation and reduction (cognitive debriefing), and pilot testing in the target population. After translation into eight languages, the DMD was used in an international randomised trial for women receiving lapatinib and capecitabine for metastatic breast cancer with or without prophylactic octreotide. Patterns of missing data and sensitivity to change were examined. Results The understandability and completeness of the 8-item DMD was confirmed in cognitive interviews and pilot testing. Practicability of the DMD was evaluated in 62 women with metastatic breast cancer (median age 57). Up to 68% reported CID at any given time-point, and 19% had diarrhoea at each time-point. Patients also described efficacy of different strategies for diarrhoea management. Missing data were associated with study discontinuation. DMD missing item response was 0.9%. Sensitivity to change was good at most assessment points. Conclusions Although further psychometric testing is recommended, initial evaluation of the DMD showed good content validity and practicability in international research with cancer patients

"The land grows people" : indigenous knowledge and social repairing in rural post-conflict Northern Uganda

This dissertation examines how individuals and communities “move on” after two decades of war and mass internal displacement in rural Acoliland, Northern Uganda (~1986-2008). Based upon fieldwork from 2004 to 2012, it explores the multi-generational angst regarding youth’s disconnection from, or disinterest in, tekwaro (Acoli indigenous knowledge) in the conflict and post-conflict years. Attending to the ways that everyday inter-generational practices engendered by a return to the land activate a range of social relationships and engagements with tekwaro, I assert that these interactions re-gather different generations in the rebuilding of social, political, and moral community. I first re-narrate the history of one rural sub-clan, and explore how ngom kwaro (ancestral land) is their prime idiom of relatedness. Detailing experiences of displacement during the recent war, I acknowledge the tic Acoli (livelihood work) necessary for survival upon their return to the land as a vital framework for inter-generational engagement. I then consider adults’ and elders’ preoccupation with the decline of woro (respect) and cuna (‘courtship’ processes) within the IDP (internally displaced persons’) camps. Exploring how cuna affects relations and their organization, I examine contemporary cuna processes as important frameworks for inter-generational interaction. I finally consider how the responsibilities and relationships activated through kin-based communal governance organizations (sub-clans, lineages) are key to understanding both tekwaro and relatedness, and examine the creation of one sub-clan’s written constitution as another significant framework for inter-generational negotiation, participation, and engagement. I emphasize that these engagements with tekwaro work to elaborate and re-elaborate relatedness, and thus serve as important practices of social repairing, grounded by communal stewardship of the land. Rather than addressing specific transgressive violences experienced during the war years, the results of this research suggest that social repair–the striving for the restoration of sociality–implicitly concerns resistance of the seeping, inscribing, relational effects of those violences. Rather, a return to the land, and the system of land tenure itself, provokes inter-generational participation that serves to make and remake relatedness, orienting social relations away from the fragmenting, unprecedented, Acoli-on Acoli violence (Oloya 2013) experienced during the years of war and displacement.Arts, Faculty ofAnthropology, Department ofGraduat