Race, Health, Cultural Safety, Birthing and Justice
I am interested in how the rapidly expanding field of consumer health technologies such as fitness trackers and “wearables” might enhance health literacy in culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities. These technologies promise to enhance health participation through personalization of health communication, yet uptake among CALD communities is limited. My research work to date has attempted to investigate the specific issues in digital health platforms that affect CALD participation; to co-design and test health communication practices that enhance the digital health literacy of CALD communities; and to produce guidelines that enable health providers, developers and policy makers to deliver culturally competent digital services.
Over recent decades I have become interested in the potential of digital technologies and data to facilitate community participation and transformational change in health. To this end I have undertaken stakeholder consultation workshops to develop research priorities for migrant and refugee background communities in Melbourne; researched digital literacies among migrant and refugee background mothers; convened a University-wide Data, Systems and Society Research Network for the University of Melbourne and have recently completed a Vice Chancellor’s Fellowship at RMIT University
I have had a long-standing interest in how the rapidly expanding field of consumer health technologies can enhance health literacy and enhance participation. However, there is a lag between the uptake of such devices and the preparedness of both health professionals and healthcare systems to integrate such useful but also voluminous data. For the last […]
In 2020 I was part of a design team including Leah Heiss, Olivia Hamilton, Marius Foley, and Olga Kokshagina, engaged by two architectural firms, to develop and deliver an online co-design process to understand the research, teaching and engagement opportunities afforded by a new health precinct. Our engagement as part of the generative stages of […]
The capacity to gather, analyse and use data through sophisticated computational techniques like big data analytics and machine learning, combined with digital surveillance represents significant social, political-economic, and technological developments that have become ubiquitous in ordering our lives. Data can be used toward potentially discriminatory or unethical purposes with the potential to exacerbate social inequalities […]
In 2020 Dr Hugh Davies, Prof Larissa Hjorth, Prof Ingrid Richardson (all from RMIT), Prof Mark Andrejevic (Monash University) and I began researching practices and perceptions of COVID-19. Our areas of inquiry included: How do Australians respond to their information and locations being monitored and recorded? How have people adjusted to differing understandings of civic […]
Exploring the impact of the proliferation of mobile and wearable health technologies, through the lens of health literacy.
Exploring perceptions around COVID19 strategies and telecare, from the point of view of older adults from CALD backgrounds living independently in Melbourne.
Sukhmani Khorana, Bhavya Chitranshi and I recently completed research about the experiences of six cisgender South Asian-Australian women who gave birth during the COVID-19 pandemic.