Human Body MAP Team

Current Research Projects

The Human Body in the New Health Care

In post-industrial countries, the characteristics of health care recipients and the nature of health care interventions have changed significantly. The rates of people receiving care pertaining to chronic illnesses, disabilities and the frailties of old age have increased dramatically. Advances in biotechnology, genetic engineering, pharmaceutical and medical sciences have led to diagnostic, therapeutic, prosthetic and adaptive possibilities that were hitherto unimaginable. Furthermore, information technologies, robotics, and remote system management tools have made it increasingly unnecessary for the bodies of care providers and care recipients to be proximal in space and/or time. In consequence, practitioners are confronted with fundamentally new questions about the nature of human embodiment, distinctions between patients and machines, and the meaning of “care”.

Effective clinical decision-making now requires a broadened perspective on the body’s legal, social, moral, and ontological status, as well as substantial inquiry into the nature of “therapy” and the expanded parameters of the concepts of “health” and “wellness”. Such themes have received careful attention within contemporary disciplines that are not traditionally associated with health care, including many of the social sciences and humanities. The goal of the Human Bodies MAP team is to examine the ways that non-traditional health research methods and modes of conceptualizing the body can help to inform new and fundamental decisions that are faced by clinicians in order to improve health outcomes for Canadians. Likewise, by enhancing the clinical knowledge of social scientists and humanists, more specific, testable hypotheses will be generated.

This MAP Team will emphasize the CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research Theme, Improving Quality.

Faculty will combine skills and areas of expertise to: identify the roles of historical and contemporary discourses about the body in producing medical curricula, culture, information, and decision-making practices; investigate the unprecedented opportunities and risks associated with the technology-embedded life forms that are produced through contemporary health care interventions, and identify the social and clinical trajectories of patients whose bodies include technology; and evaluate the use of diverse technologies to enable health care transactions to occur in the absence of physical bodies. Issues pertaining to Health Care Evaluation and Technology Assessment, Public Advice Seeking in an Era of eHealth, and Health Human Resources will also be addressed. Faculty include: Adrienne Chambon (Social Work/Cultural Studies), Ross Gray (Cancer Research/Social Psychology); Geoff Fernie (Engineering/Assistive Technologies); Elizabeth Harvey (English/Gender Studies), and Patricia McKeever (Health Sociology/Nursing).