Challenging health inequalities research from a 鈥渟ociological imagination鈥�
March 14th 1:30-2:30 PM EST
2001 麻豆AV College, 11th floor, room 1140 or via ZOOM
Dennis P茅rez Chac贸n, MSc, PhD.
Senior researcher & Associate professor
Epidemiology Unit, Research, Diagnosis and Reference Center (CIDR)
Pedro Kour铆 Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK), Havana, Cuba
Speaker Bio:聽Dennis P茅rez is a sociologist (Havana University, 1997); with postgraduate training on popular education, participatory action research, disease control (Master degree, ITM, 2004) and social development (Master degree, Havana University, 2007), among others. She holds a PhD in Sociology (Havana University, 2011) and in Health Sciences (Gent University, 2015). She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Public Health Research Institute of University of Montreal (2016-2019).
Since 1997 she has worked as researcher at the Epidemiology Division of Pedro Kour铆 Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK), Havana, Cuba. She has been working for nearly 10 years on building evidence on empowerment strategies for dengue prevention and control in the Cuban context. Her focus has been the dynamics of empowerment processes at small scale and the factors that could influence these processes when moving from micro to macro implementation. Based on her empirical, mainly qualitative, research and on her sociological background, and together with her colleagues, she has brought theoretical developments on the concept of participation and on some implementation issues.
Over the years, her research interest and efforts have shifted to better on how socio-political context and individual equity dimensions (e.g., health access, gender, race/ethnicity, and income) explain health gaps.
Abstract:聽During the seminar Dr. P茅rez Chac贸n will illustrate challenges, opportunities, and advances on health inequalities research, sharing examples from empirical research on prevention and control of infectious diseases (e.g., Dengue, Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19), using unconventional methodologies. The seminar will include a perspective of research through her own scholarly journey as Afro-Latina, working on different diseases and research contexts, and within a particular set of theoretical and methodological resources. The idea is to challenge current definitions and concepts or approaches on health inequalities research and share the contributions from a complementary sociological background, a participatory paradigm, reflexivity and transdisciplinary, into new alternatives of practicing research in Public Health.
This event is cohosted by the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health and the Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy.