PHE 555 Decolonizing Public Health Research: Epidemiology, Epistemology, & Embodiment

Credits: 3
Given the growing discourse regarding health inequities, and the increasing amount of capital resources committed to such research, it is increasingly important to examine matters of equity and justice within health-related research disciplines-particularly as related to the discursive powers of epidemiology science as knowledge production in population, clinical, and biomedical health research settings. Here, extant procedural and methodological norms habitually preclude expressions of/actively mask community resident/research participant agency, discounting/devaluing their knowledges/expertise while simultaneously dispossessing them of their stories/experiences, i.e. “data.” In this regard, relationships between researchers and community residents/research participants can represent not only the re-inscription of social hierarchy, but the reification of public health research as (re)colonization-the products of which are actively sold and spent within professional, social, and financial capital markets. Conceptual and methodological modifications are thus fundamental to appropriately (re)frame, assess, and address considerations of epistemic, procedural, and distributive justice within the field. This seminar course will focus on developing students’ understanding of the social production of science as specifically related to epidemiological research on population health and health inequities. In this spirit, this course will provide a cursory introduction to core theories and conceptual frameworks related to knowledge, power, and power-knowledge relations, and the manner in which these relations inform/animate public health research. It will critically interrogate dominant epistemologies and paradigms of research practice within the field (e.g. positivism, reductionism, essentialism). In this capacity, this course will explore the prospect that public health research, and epidemiology specifically, functions as a technology of biopower reliant upon the (re)colonization of historically and presently oppressed and socially/politically excluded populations-a (re)colonization tacitly endorsed by modern public health knowledge and “health equity” frames that subjugate “other(ed)” bodies/knowledges as disembodied health artifacts (i.e. data) to be “discovered” for commodification within financial (and social) capital knowledge markets. In doing so, this course will draw upon and integrate critical theory and concepts related to ecosocial theory and embodiment, decolonial theory and settler colonialism, critical race theory, Black feminist theory, biopower and biopolitics, participatory research, data justice, and decolonizing methods. As feasible given quarterly enrollment, students will work in interprofessional teams to explore these various course themes, integrating their respective knowledges, lens, and experiences to critically examine epistemological values and discursive properties of (epidemiological) public health research.

Graded: A-F
May be taken only once for credit