Attending to Differential Environmental Exposures Among Racialized Newcomer Women in Canada: Why so Difficult?
Year: 2019
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis aims to increase understanding of differential environmental exposures and to explore how inequity in environmental health can be viewed and articulated for newcomer and racialized women in Canada. Based on a subpopulation biomonitoring study of heavy metal concentrations among South and East Asian newcomer women in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), entitled “Metals in Newcomer Women (MNW),” this thesis is comprised of three individual papers. The first paper modified selected reflective and transformational questions of an Intersectionality-Based Analysis to frame my examination of the environmental research itself. Through a personal reflexive process, I analyzed the processes by which the research was identified, constructed, developed, and funded to examine assumptions, definitions, and values that contributed to study decisions. Transformational questions provided a framework to think about the problem differently and about potential challenges in doing so. The second paper addresses how adopting elements of community-based research (CBR) in the MNW study increased relevance and reach for our communities of interest. The paper describes how CBR elements included developing meaningful partnerships with public health organizations and actively engaging peer researchers, as well as newcomer women with similar linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The latter bridged the gap with many of our participants and helped to overcome known barriers to participation. As health professionals themselves, with experience interacting in clinical settings, peer researchers provided expertise and familiarity, shared more adequate explanations of relevant topics, and helped participants overcome the reluctance to participate in a scientific study. The third paper uses mixed methods to explore the “exposure experience” of MNW study participants and to understand how individuals may process, interpret and respond to the knowledge of the presence of bodily contaminants. Grounding research in the experiences and perspectives of underrepresented populations provides a deeper and broadened understanding of non-dominant views and definitions of the environment, allowing an examination of intersecting identities and social categories and how these contribute to conceptualizing exposures. The findings of this thesis suggest that challenging dominant conceptual frameworks that underpin environmental health research, through the application of intersectional and critical race perspectives and the use of community-based approaches, can augment and enhance equity-relevant implications of environmental health for racialized newcomer women
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Dolon Chakravartty
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3087265520