Denise Spitzer

I am a medical anthropologist with over 25 years of experience working in the area of gender, migration, and health. My work focuses on the ways in which global processes interact with various forms of social stratification and are implicated in health and wellbeing of mobile persons (migrants, immigrants, refugees, etc.) and their families at the level of the body, household/family, and community. Among other initiatives, I have over the years: examined the interactions amongst hospitals, health care professionals, and racialized women (mostly foreign-born), which contributed to the establishment of cultural brokers in area hospitals; helped to illuminate the loss of the healthy immigrant effect by highlighting the role that social effects play in the development of stress-related conditions or amorphous complaints I call the embodiment of marginalization; engaged in numerous studies on the meanings of social support among various immigrant and refugee communities in Canada and have tested social support interventions for African refugee new parents; generated a series of inter-linking research projects focused on migration, work, gender, and health with foreign domestic care workers across both urban and rural Canada as they moved from temporary worker status to permanent residency and permanent resettlement with their families; conducted research with Indonesian and Filipino domestic workers in Malaysia on their work, health status, and access to health care; examined the impact of the global recession on the health and wellbeing of Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers and their families who were subject to or threatened with repatriation from other countries due to retrenchment; and co-led the Filipino team of a cross-national study that explored the impact of health worker migration on source countries. My current research projects include: a study with rural-to-urban migrant women in the Lao PDR, Thailand, and Cambodia who work as beer sellers that highlights both the gendered occupational health issues they confront and how they are resisted; an investigation that follows both financial and social remittances from Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong back to their hometowns to assess their impact on health and wellbeing of migrant families; as assessment into the impact of a health centre turned community economic and educational hub on the livelihood and wellbeing of IDPs and refugees in the Somali Region of Ethiopia; and participate in an Ontario-based study as Ottawa team lead on healthy aging amongst Arabic- and Spanish-speaking seniors.