Announcements

Each issue of Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare provides readers with peer-reviewed articles that examine: the illness experience from multiple and varied perspectives; constructions of health, illness and healthcare that highlight relational and global contexts; healthcare policies in various organizational and institutional settings; the pressures of neoliberalism on healthcare; attention to the communicative dynamics of the patient-provider relationship; narrative approaches to health.

  • Thematic Issue | Legacies of Bhopal: 40 years on – Call for Papers

    2024-02-29

    Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare invites original manuscripts, reviews, case reports, and pedagogical activities focused on the legacy of the Bhopal Gas Disaster, known as ‘the world’s worst industrial disaster’. 

    December 3, 2024, will mark 40 years since 40 metric tons of the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. In these past 40 years, the still-unfolding disaster has shaped environmental/occupational health and justice worldwide. For instance, responding directly to the disaster, the U.S. Congress enacted the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) and the Toxics Release Inventory. Moreover, the disaster continues to serve as a point of reference for toxics-impacted communities globally.

     

    The events of December 3rd are the most well-known aspect of this disaster. Less studied is the “slow violence” wreaked by the lack of clean-up, groundwater contamination, and chronic and intergenerational health impacts. Despite a longstanding dismissal of survivors' legal and medical claims, survivor-led and on-the-ground support groups creatively address the needs of the impacted communities. Workers' alliances and community-led social movement groups sustain a transnational movement for justice, engage in citizen science, have developed holistic approaches to relieving survivors’ chemical body burdens, and attend to the broader environmental health crisis.  

    Frontline communities are typically subject to “toxic gaslighting” that constructs their lived experiences as inaccurate, exaggerated, or suspicious “voices of the side effects”. Qualitative studies of environmental health disasters help mitigate the harms done by technical models of risk communication, which dismiss community-based, sensory, embodied, intuitive, and experiential knowledges.

    The co-editors for this special issue invite papers that focus on the Bhopal Gas Disaster and its legacies and impacts worldwide. Papers need not directly focus on the Bhopal gas disaster but must refer to and center its legacy. Heeding Dr. Eve Tuck’s crucial call to cease “damage-centered research,” we invite papers that resist the tendency to portray Bhopal’s survivors and frontline communities solely in terms of victimhood, pain, and strife. Papers can include research studies, first-person accounts, book reviews, and relevant pedagogical activities.

    Find more information HERE

  • Special issue: Lived Experience Views of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury – Call for Papers

    2023-11-10

    Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare invites original manuscripts and reviews focused on lived experience views of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI).

    NSSI is a relatively common behavior, reported by approximately 1 in 5 adolescents and young people, and approximately 5% of adults. Given it is usually used as a means of coping, it is not surprising that NSSI is associated with a range of psychological morbidities, interpersonal difficulties, and subsequent suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Because of these adverse outcomes, much research has focused on identifying risk and protective factors, with a view to preventing or limiting NSSI.

    More recently there have been moves to adopt a person-centered approach to understanding and addressing NSSI. This shift moves away from traditional studies of risk and protective factors and moves towards understanding the day-to-day experience of someone who self-injures. Here, the focus has been on issues such as the meaning of recovery, the experience of stigma, factors that might influence whether someone chooses to disclose their NSSI and to whom, and the meaning of any scarring that may result from NSSI. In understanding these experiences, we must prioritize the voices of individuals with lived experience.

    The co-editors for this special issue seek qualitative papers that highlight the voices of people with lived experience of NSSI. Papers can include research studies and literature reviews that describe how people with a history of NSSI view their experience.

  • Thematic Issue on Infodemic – Call for Papers

    2023-03-27

    Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare invites original manuscripts, reviews case reports, and pedagogical activities focused on Infodemics. According to the World Health Organization, “an Infodemic is too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak.”

     

    The SARS-COVID 19 pandemic has illustrated why quality information about disease and disease prevention is essential, and has raised critical questions about trust in science and medicine, as well as health literacy and the power of social media to both enable and constrain efforts to minimize the spread of contagious diseases.

     

    The co-editors for this special issue seek papers that focus on how practitioners and scholars are helping the public manage during an Infodemic (or Disinfodemic) using qualitative methods. Papers can include research studies, first-person accounts, and pedagogical activities that describe strategies for responding to an infodemic.

    You may find more information HERE.