demographics Archives | Research & Innovation

Interactive computer assessments may help foster health equity

fmaquito — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Through the use of interactive, computer-assisted health-assessments, Professor Farah Ahmad hopes to foster equity in health care, especially at the intersections of gender, ethnicity and migration. Ahmad will present her research and discuss how embracing eHealth innovations can boost community empowerment as part of the 91��ɫ eHealth Alliance Lecture Series.

The lecture, “eHealth Innovations to Address Health Inequities: A Case of Computer-Assisted Health-Assessment in Primary Care,” will take place Thursday, Feb. 16, from 3 to 4pm, at 402 Health, Nursing & Environmental Studies Building.

Farah Ahmad

“Equity in health-care access is a key social determinant of population health,” says Ahmad, who is based in the Faculty of Health’s School of Health Policy & Management. “Fostering equity mechanisms is more salient today than ever before due to the challenges of economic recession and changing demographics.”

One way to embrace eHealth is by using interactive computer-assisted health-assessments in primary care for prevention and health promotion. Her recent research demonstrates that these kinds of assessments can enable patients to disclose socially stigmatized issues, such as partner violence and compromised mental health, as well as assist providers to offer needed care and referrals.

Ahmad’s action research on eHealth for psychosocial healthcare re-orientation takes place at the critical intersections of gender, ethnicity and migration. It is grounded in principles of social science includes quantitative and qualitative studies with inner city women, refugees and health-care providers. She will highlight the potential to develop integrated care models as an important pathway for simultaneous actions on the multiple health determinants that improve life conditions.

Ahmad is affiliated with the Centre for Research on Inner City Health, St. Michael’s Hospital as an associate scientist and with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Strategic Training Initiatives on Health Research on Health, Care, Place & Technology as a mentor. She held several prestigious fellowships, including awards from the CIHR during her doctorate and post-doctorate.

For more information, visit the Faculty of Health website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Professor Thomas Klassen heads to Korea to research and mobilize new labour force policies

fmaquito — Tue, 24 May 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Thomas Klassen, a professor in the Department of Political Science and the School of Public Policy & Administration in the Faculty of Liberal & Professional Studies, has been invited to South Korea to be a visiting researcher.

Right: Thomas Klassen

The has asked Klassen to conduct research on new policies for Korea’s labour force and to share his findings with decision-makers. The institute is responsible for contributing to public policy and raising awareness of labour issues through timely and analytical research. As well, Klassen will spend several months studying Korea's retirement policies. Specifically, he will examine how the changing labour market, particularly a rapidly aging population, impacts mandatory retirement practices.

His research in Korea will also provide insights for Canada, which also has a rapid increase in older workers.

An expert on retirement policies, Klassen teaches courses on the politics of aging. He is the co-editor of (2005), the only book on mandatory retirement in Canada. Last year, Klassen co-edited with Jae-jin Yang the book .

This will not be Klassen's first working stint in South Korea. In 2006-2007, he taught at Yonsei University in Seoul and wrote about the lighter side of the experience for 91��ɫU magazine under the title .

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Professor Philipp Angermeyer: Kids + txting rn’t killing the language

fmaquito — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

The idea that our dependence on technology is ruining the English language is not a new one, :

Members of the media, linguists and grammar gurus are on both sides, pushing and pulling over the implications associated with texting, blogging and e-mailing. Many who think language is being flushed down the toilet put the blame squarely on younger generations. Is this criticism accurate or even relevant?

“In some ways, it’s a reaction to change and a reluctance to accept change, but to some extent it’s also a fictitious topic that doesn’t have any merit,” says Philipp Angermeyer, a linguistics professor in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. Many experts feel the same way.

. . .

So, considering how little research there is to back up the claim that technology is destroying language, why does this hell-in-a-handbasket opinion persist? Prof. Zwicky talks about the “adolescent illusion,” where adults pay selective attention to the language and writing of adolescents, and see the mistakes they make as the source of this “trend.” In fact, adults are responsible for as much as 80 to 90 per cent of text messaging, so if it’s hurting the language, why should young people be held responsible?

“To some extent, it has to do with attitudes toward people,” says Prof. Angermeyer. “The columnist wouldn’t write this if they didn’t also think there was something else wrong with the people they speak about.” These types of criticisms, he explains, are considered politically acceptable complaints meant to be aimed at certain groups of people, motivated by some other dislike.

This intergenerational tension goes both ways. A 2009 Conference Board of Canada survey of more than 900 Gen X, Gen Y and baby boomer respondents revealed that each generation marked the other two with unfair stereotypes. Boomers were considered less accepting of diversity and change and uncomfortable with technology. Gen Xers were cynical and independent. Gen Yers were lazy and difficult to manage. While each generation viewed the other two negatively, most participants were alike in many ways, with similar personality types, workplace motivations and social behaviours. While we all may come from different social groups, our language dialects and writing styles are very similar, and are not about to change any time soon.

It all boils down to what is appropriate in what context. “If I write a text message, my text might be inappropriately long and full of punctuation,” says Prof. Angermeyer.

“Ultimately, from a theoretical perspective, the only distinction you can really make is between native speakers [of a dialect] and non-native speakers. Every native speaker is a competent language speaker, and depending on what you are exposed to and what environments you use the language in, you acquire different skills.”

The complete article is available on .

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Professor Thomas Klassen: South Korea’s population targeted to be ‘most elderly’ by 2025

fmaquito — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By 2050, the median age in Korea is projected to be 57 years, according to an article written by Thomas Klassen of 91��ɫ’s Department of Political Science in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. The article was published January 12, 2010 for , but was quoted in , some of which don't factor in the aging Korean population.

An excerpt from Klassen's original article follows:

South Korea (henceforth Korea) faces a challenge quite distinct from any other: the world’s most rapidly ageing population. The speed of population ageing in Korea is unprecedented in human history. From a population profile that resembled a pyramid (with many younger individuals and few older individuals) in 1990, the profile is now diamond-shaped (with a large middle-aged population). In another couple of decades, the country’s population will be an inverse pyramid: few young people and many older ones.

By 2050, the median age of the population of Korea is projected to be 57 years, making it the most elderly nation in the world. In contrast, at present, Japan has the oldest median age at 43 years, while Korea’s stands at 37years.

Population ageing is not unique to Korea. Many European nations, and Japan, have faced it. However, as Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Director-General of the World Health Organization, noted: “While the developed countries became rich before they became old, the developing countries will become old before they become rich.” That is the dilemma for Korea, and for other rapidly ageing nations such as China.

For Korea, things were never meant to turn out this way. Its government and people never aimed for the distinction of the world’s most rapidly ageing country. Indeed, Koreans were not supposed to stop have babies, especially since there was never a one-child policy as in China. Rather, as the economy grew and consumption increased over the past several decades, couples making their individual choices began to opt for fewer and fewer children. By the mid-1980s, the fertility rate (the average number of births per woman) dropped below the replacement rate of 2.1, and by the mid 1990s below 1.5. For nearly the past decade, it has not exceeded 1.3 giving Korea the distinction of having the lowest fertility of any country.

Klassen's complete article is available on .

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer.

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Researcher and City Institute director shifts the lens to suburbs around the globe

fmaquito — Tue, 18 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

The suburbs have often been dismissed as cultureless wastelands of cookie-cutter housing and strip malls. But 91��ɫ environmental studies Professor Roger Keil, principal investigator of a major international research initiative, says there’s a lot more happening in suburbia than people think and researchers have ignored it for far too long. Most urban growth these days is suburban development and yet, until now, there has not been an encompassing study of suburbs around the world which examines their challenges and commonalities.

“The suburbs have not received a lot of attention, so we’re trying to shift the lens, so to speak,” says Keil, director of the City Institute at 91��ɫ (CITY). “Urbanization is at the core of the growth and crisis of the global economy today. Yet, the crucial aspect of 21st-century urban development is suburbanization, which is defined as the combination of an increase in non-central city population and economic activity, as well as urban spatial expansion.”

Left: Suburbs being built in 91��ɫ Region. Photo by Roger Keil.

With $2.5 million in research funding through the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada’s program, Keil, along with some 43 researchers from around the globe, will study various aspects of what he likes to call the in-between city. Global Suburbanisms: Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century is “the first major research project that takes stock of worldwide suburban developments in a systematic way. By studying suburbs, we analyze recent forms of urbanization and emerging forms of urbanism across the world, but we also take into view the dilemmas of aging suburbanity,” he says. Canadian suburbanization and suburbanism trends will serve as a critical basis for understanding suburbanization in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia.

What makes suburbs so important to study is their abundant growth. In the 1800s, only about two per cent of the world’s population was urbanized. That increased to about 10 per cent in the 1900s and to almost 50 per cent in the early 2000s. The suburbs are changing and growing, and, in North America at least, they are becoming the place to be. “It’s a percentage increase but also a real increase because the world population has risen dramatically,” says Keil. “More and more people don’t live in dense urban centres anymore, they live in suburbs. So now we call it suburbanization instead of urbanization.” Canada is one of the most highly urbanized countries in the world and that includes the suburbs. When people immigrate to Canada, they often move straight to the suburbs, places like Brampton and Markham, bypassing cities like Toronto altogether.

Right: Roger Keil

The question then becomes, “When we see a suburb, how do we understand it? We want to create a different way of looking at things,” says Keil. “We also hope in the process…this information becomes useful to users of suburban spaces, where they consume and produce, as well as to developers.”

By examining the governance of suburbanization, researchers will get a better idea of how development is guided and regulated, and how state, market and civil society actors are involved. The seven-year project is comprised of many smaller studies of two to four years in length. The two prime anchors will be land – housing, shelter systems, real estate, greenbelts and megaprojects – and infrastructure, including transportation, water and social services.

Keil’s own keen interest is in greenbelts and the relationships between natural and social, urban and suburban. How, for instance, does water fit in? Where does it come from, a pipe, a lake, a well? What is the relationship of suburbanization to water? How is it used? “We need to develop alternatives and this is particularly true in environmental metabolism of waste disposal, water, smog. The energy use has increased…the environmental bads growing out of suburbs have outpaced suburbanization,” he says. “We all live in one environmental global space.” There is a need to understand that interconnectivity.

Left: Suburb of Kuisebmond in Namibia, Africa. Photo by Roger Keil.

In the process of studying suburbanization, researchers will be up against the traditional biases and ingrained way people think about the areas surrounding the city core, often as urban sprawl. “We need to break down and expand the way people look at the suburbs,” says Keil. There is not just one type of suburban development. There are the squatter settlements in Africa and Latin America, the expanding outskirts of India and China, the peripheral high-rise developments in Europe and Canada, and North America’s gated communities. With the different types of development come different social and cultural norms, land-use patterns and forms of transportation. “Through one lens we say these are all suburbanizations.” Until now, there has been “no serious attempt to bring all these phenomena together.”

This project will look at the differences between central cities and suburbs, as well as the diversity of suburban development. “Suburbs are very diverse ethnically, culturally and lifestyle-wise and the gender roles are not as traditional as 'Leave it to Beaver' may have led us to believe.” People around the world have negotiated the suburban realm in a variety of different ways.

New forms of suburbanization are being created all the time. There are copycat North American suburbs in Calcutta, for instance. Keil expects that suburbs around the world have different trajectories of where they’re going and he hopes that they can learn from one another. As it turns out, all cities and suburbs are not looking like Los Angeles or Chicago, as once thought. “We’re turning that upside down,” says Keil. “Conceptually, we want to rewrite the books. The suburbs can all be understood under a number of guidelines we want to develop. So there is a common lens we can look through despite the large variety of forms we see.”

In addition to the various studies, classes, workshops and conferences will held around the world. There will be a travelling multimedia exhibition at the end, a book series and a series of documentaries produced in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada. 91��ɫ’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit will connect the research with policy-makers and community organizations over the span of the project.

Through this project, the suburbs may finally get a little respect.

For more information, visit the CITY Web site.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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