- Intersectionality and health
- Cancer disparities
- Access to cancer care for historically marginalized populations
- Community-based research
- Participatory action research
- Implementation research
As a medical anthropologist, my goal is to improve healthcare and reduce health disparities for historically underserved populations using qualitative, multi-method and community-based methodologies. My research program is broadly focused on addressing gaps in cancer prevention and treatment for populations that have been historically marginalized due to hierarchies of race and social class. I have examined how cancer care is affected by immigration status, social class, and gender. My current work centers on the practices of advance care planning among English and Spanish-speaking people living with cancer and their providers, and access to cancer care for people with disabilities.
Current Projects as PI or Co-PI:
- Improving Shared Decision-Making about Cancer Screening Among American Indian Women Experiencing Intellectual Disabilities (co-PI: Heather Williamson, NAU – Partnership for Native American Cancer Prevention)
- Improving Advance Care Planning through Better Care Coordination (Funder: American Academy of Family Physicians)
Current Projects as Co-Investigator:
- A Guided Imagery Tobacco Cessation Intervention Delivered by a Quitline and Website (PI: Judith Gordon)
- Expanding Patient-Centered Cancer Care for Underserved Patients in Southern Arizona (PI: Heidi Hamann)
Recent Selected Publications:
- Negotiating Structural Vulnerability in Cancer Control (2019)
- Administrative (in)Visibility of Patient Structural Vulnerability and the Hierarchy of Moral Distress among Health Care Staff (2019)
- Survivorship Care Plan Outcomes for Physicians, Cancer Survivors and Systems: A Scoping Review (2018, Weston LaGrandeur, first author)
- Development of a multi-behavioral mHealth app for women smokers (2017)
- Managing Borders, Bodies, and Cancer: Documents and the Creation of Subjects (2015)