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Training workshop for graduate students: Using social science to understand the healthcare economy
Using social science to understand the healthcare economy
Training workshop for graduate students
4-5 May 2018, Boğaziçi University-İstanbul
Workshop information:
Boğaziçi University Social Policy Forum, in collaboration with the Department of International Development at King’s College London and with the financial support of the British Academy for Social Sciences and Humanities, cordially invites graduate students in social sciences to apply for a two-day health policy research-training workshop. The workshop will cover different social science approaches to understand and analyse the healthcare economy and will provide a platform for knowledge exchange and scholarly discussion among graduate students in social sciences specialized in health policy issues. The workshop will be led by Professor Susan Fairley Murray -the Head of Department of International Development at King’s College London- and Dr. Benjamin Hunter -Teaching Fellow at King’s College London. This workshop is organized as part of the British Academy Newton Advanced Fellowship granted to Dr. Volkan Yılmaz, the Director of Social Policy Forum Research Centre at Bogazici University.
Time: 4-5 May 2018, between 10.00-17.00
Location: Boğaziçi University, South Campus Nafi Baba Building, Room 103
Instructors: Susan Fairley Murray and Benjamin Hunter
Language: English
Participant profile: This workshop is designed to support master’s or PHD students in social sciences enrolled in a university in Turkey, who is specialized in broadly defined health policy issues. No translation services will be provided in the workshop, so competency in English language is required.
Application process: Updated CV and 1-A4 page Statement of Purpose which is expected to include applicant’s motivation(s) to participate in this workshop and his/her research agenda in health policy issues. To apply, these documents must be sent to spf@boun.edu.tr until 17:00 on May 2nd, 2018. Successful candidates will be notified the next day.
Using social science to understand the healthcare economy
Postgraduate training workshop
4-5 May 2018, Istanbul
May 4
10:00-11:00 Introductions. The global healthcare economy and the contribution of social science to its understanding
11.30-13.00 Evaluative research, rigour and its limitations
15:30-17:00 Private health insurance as an institution of governance: a sociological perspective ‘Work in progress’ seminar by Professor Fairley Murray
May 5
10:00-11:30 People in the healthcare economy
12:00-13:30 Place and the healthcare economy
15:00-17:00 Student presentations. Discussion on doctoral training.
The global healthcare economy and the contribution of social sciences
This session introduces features of the contemporary global healthcare economy, including the circuits of people and money that have extended globally and the drivers of commodification and international trade in health-related services. We consider why social science research is important in this area.
Required reading
Murray SF, Bisht R, Baru R, Pitchforth E. 2012. Understanding health systems, health economies and globalization: the need for social science perspectives. Globalization and Health, 8:30
Further optional reading
Connell J. 2013. Contemporary medical tourism: Conceptualisation, culture and commodification. Tourism Management, 34:1-13
Connell J, Walton-Roberts M. 2015. What about the workers? The missing geographies of health care. Progress in Human Geography, 40(2): 158-76
Evaluative research, rigour and its limitations
This session considers the role of evaluative research in health policy research. Using the example of mixed-method systematic reviews on demand-side financing the session examines the rationale and methods for assessing ‘rigour’ in health policy analysis. The session scrutinises the limited scope of such studies and the important questions that ultimately go unasked.
Required reading
Hunter B, Murray SF, Bick D, Ensor T, Bisht R. 2011. Demand-side financing measures to increase maternal health service utilisation and improve health outcomes: a systematic review of evidence from low- and middle-income countries. Working paper
Adams V. 2013. “Evidence-Based Global Public Health: Subjects, Profits, Erasures”, in Biehl J, Petryna A (eds.) Critical studies in global health. Princeton University Press
Further optional reading
Gideon J, Hunter BM, Murray SF. 2017. Public-private partnerships in sexual and reproductive healthcare provision: establishing a gender analysis. Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy, 33(2): 166-80
Hunter BM, Murray SF. 2017. Demand-side financing for maternal and newborn health: what do we know about factors that affect implementation of cash transfers and voucher programmes? BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 17:262
Storeng K, Behague D. 2014. “Playing the Numbers Game”: Evidence-based Advocacy and the Technocratic Narrowing of the Safe Motherhood Initiative. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 28(2): 260-79
People and the healthcare economy
This session focuses on studying the role of people in the healthcare economy. We will consider the value of detailed qualitative research for studying how people understand and perform activities in and around healthcare systems, and some of the challenges involved. Our attention then turns to the framework approach and its potential for targeted data analysis. Detailed qualitative research on a health voucher scheme in Uttar Pradesh, India, is used as a case study to show the ways in which a health policy can be varyingly interpreted and enacted by people according to their personal histories and strategies.
Required reading
Biehl JG. 2007. Pharmaceuticalization: AIDS Treatment and Global Health Politics. Anthropological Quarterly, 80(4): 1083-1126
Pope C, Ziebland S, Mays N. 2000. Analysing qualitative data. BMJ, 320(7227): 114-6
Further optional reading
Holliday et al. 2015. Brief encounters: Assembling cosmetic surgery tourism. Social Science & Medicine, 124: 298-304
Hunter BM. 2018. Brokerage in commercialised healthcare systems: A conceptual framework and empirical evidence from Uttar Pradesh. Social Science & Medicine, 202, 128-135
Nading AM. 2013. “Love isn’t there in your stomach”: a moral economy of medical citizenship among Nicaraguan community health workers. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 27(1), 84–102
Place and the healthcare economy
This session introduces the concept of place from the perspective of sociology and cultural geography. We consider how these ideas can help us to analyse and understand the changing healthcare delivery scenario in middle-income countries in an era of neoliberalisation. The case study draws on policy and consultancy documents, marketing materials and online press media to examine the imaginary of the ‘medicity’ in the context of India, and its links to domestic and global political economy of healthcare and global circuits of capital.
Required reading
Murray SF, Bisht R, Pitchforth E. 2016. Emplacing India's “medicities”. Health & place, 42, 69-78.
Further optional reading
Gieryn T F. 2000 A Space for Place in Sociology Annual Review of Sociology 26: 463-496
Lefebvre B. 2008. The Indian corporate hospitals: touching middle class lives, in
Jaffrelot C and van der Veer P (eds) Patterns of middle class consumption in India and China. SAGE Publications
Martin D et al. 2015. Architecture and health care: a place for sociology. Sociology of Health and Illness, 37(7): 1007-22
Kearns RA, Barnett JR, Newman D. 2003. Placing private health care: reading Ascot hospital in the landscape of contemporary Auckland. Social Science and Medicine, 56:2303-15
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Dr Volkan Yilmaz is Assistant Professor of Social Policy in the Institute for Graduate Studies Social Sciences and the Director of Social Policy Forum Research Centre at Bogazici University. His research examines the politics of social policy reform, with particular interest in the healthcare sector. |
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Dr Susan Fairley Murray is Professor of Health, Society and Development and Head of the Department of International Development, King’s College London. She is an interdisciplinary social scientist working at the interface of Sociology, Public Health and International Development Studies. Her research examines the moral economy of healthcare markets and how health systems can generate or prevent health and wider social goals. |
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Dr Benjamin Hunter is Teaching Fellow in Development Studies at King’s College London. His teaching and research interests relate to healthcare policies and systems in emerging economy countries, and in particular the idea of healthcare markets. His work examines how market theories are promoted in the health sector, and the systems and inequities that ensue. |
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Visit www.unsettlinghealthcare.org for more information on their current research projects
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