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Table 1 Health of health workers study (CIHR funded)

From: Why language matters: insights and challenges in applying a social determination of health approach in a North-South collaborative research program

 

Conceptualization, research and praxis

Accomplishments and challenges

Bio-Security

In analyzing options for improving occupational health conditions and decreasing the risk of infectious disease transmission, effects of global economic driving forces on understaffing, underfunding of public hospitals and cost-reducing work patterns are considered, in addition to the needs for implementing control measures for specific organisms.

Trends in increased health expenditures and improved access to healthcare have been identified as linked to political processes - with impacts on working conditions of health workers documented empirically. Health effect associations with organizational, environmental and individual work patterns are being revealed using multi-methods research techniques and placed in a micro-mezzo-macro framework to guide integrated interventions at different levels.

- Health justice

Sustainability

Processes that produce disease, disability or death in health workers, and generate burnout in the healthcare workforce are explicitly recognized as leading to an unsustainable health system.

Empirical research conducted with survey research methods demonstrated burnout in medical staff, associated with their modes of living and the managerial decisions that affect their work life.

- Ecological justice

Solidarity

Focus is on building conditions for empowering health workers and developing networks to share expertise and strengthen capacity to act collectively. Attention is paid to ensuring that interventions concentrate on equity of access to prevention measures as well as services.

Emphasis is on building local knowledge and capacity for action, with attention to needs of all healthcare workers. While yet unclear as to whether the networks being built will be formally recognized by existing institutional structures, hopefully they will be nurtured by camaraderie nonetheless.

- Social justice

- Agency

Sovereignty

Local ways of producing and disseminating evidence for decision-making are respected, with “outcomes of interest” determined by local values and priorities.

The interventions being implemented were identified and driven by the local Southern partners; information and work surveillance systems developed with Northern expertise will hopefully serve to assist in documenting effectiveness of interventions.

- Epistemological justice

- Interculturality

- Respect for local expertise