Janice E. Graham

• (as Principal Investigator) Risk and Regulation of Novel Therapeutic Products: A Case Study of Biologics and Emerging Genetic Technologies (CIHR MOP 74473).

• (as Co-Investigator, with Gina Bravo) Substitute consent for research involving decisionally incapacitated older adults: A nationwide study of knowledge, opinion and practices (CIHR MOP 200409).

• (as Co-Investigator; Vural Ozdemir, Principal Investigator) Unpacking the public-private gap in the applications of ‘omics’ technologies: A socio- ethical analysis of pharmacogenomics research funding (CIHR).
  

Sharon Batt's dissertation research uses theories and methods from science and technology studies to examine practices and ethical debates within Canada's breast cancer movement about funding from the pharmaceutical industry. Her doctoral work is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Training Program in Ethics of Health Research and Policy and a Norah Stephen Oncology Fellowship. Her research for Women and Health Protection on Canada's policies to address the presence of pharmaceuticals in the environment won a 2005 Canadian Environmental Award in environmental health.

Mavis Jones currently holds a Canadian Institute of Health Research Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Genetics (Ethics, Law and Society) which supports her ethnographic research within Health Canada. As part of this, she is collaborating with regulators on the incorporation of public input into safety review of health products. This project builds on her interest in how problems are framed, and how expertise is defined, in technology policy and regulation.

Farah Huzair investigates the evolving Subsequent Entry Biologics (SEB) regulatory pipeline and the impacts of new regulation on the innovation, development and production of SEB vaccines. The study has a qualitative methodology and will involve a comparison of two vaccine cases in Canada. The overall aim of the project is to be able to discuss the implications of the evolving regulation for the Canadian SEB vaccine industry.

Amrita Mishra's work involves an ethnographic examination of the new questions and issues for the field of cervical cancer prevention with the availability of vaccination against high risk HPV. Contending views on vaccination seem to take on a keener significance in the case of Nova Scotia, a Canadian province with one of Canada's well established and organized cervical cancer screening programs (the other is British Columbia). The QEII Health Sciences Centre is one of the actors that has been involved in clinical trials of GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix. Amrita will examine the work of the infectious disease specialists both at the laboratory end and at the clinical application end. She plans to interview people who enter clinical trials and vaccination drives or admit their children to it. Her methodology would also involve an ethnographic engagement with the laboratories at Dalhousie Med/Dalhousie University involved in or interested in virally induced oncogenesis, cancer biomarkers, and vaccination.

Marylène Dugas is a medical anthropologist (PhD Université de Montréal, 2007) and a postdoctoral research fellow at the department of bioethics (Dalhousie University). She works mainly in the field of Reproductive and Child Health and in the field of Knowledge Translation. Her doctoral research explored the transfer and acquisition of medical knowledge relating to the management of infectious diseases by the communities in a West African context. Her current work aim at improving decision making outcomes and quality of care through intervention and research about the process of communication between a patient and physician that results in the patient’s authorization or informed consent to undergo a specific medical intervention or to participate in a clinical research.

Alexander Borda-Rodriguez Alex investigates the politics behind knowledge production and its dissemination in the heath-medicine field. His research agenda also explores North-South and South-South knowledge cooperation across health experts, policy makers and beneficiaries at the field level. He is also involved in the Burkinabé-Canadian study of the implementation and effectiveness of the new conjugate meningococcal A vaccine for Africa where he is looking at the impact of such a vaccine on poverty and development.

To learn more about our research, please view the following:

Productivity Report (April 2009)

TRRU Publications