Event location
Guest Speaker Seminars will take place at Seminar Room 218, FHH (Frederik Holsts hus), 12:15-13:30.
Zoom link for those wishing to attend online.
Abstract
Patients are increasingly seeking health care and health information through digital spaces and services, and the pace of this shift accelerated rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet research and theory has not kept pace with this change. Most digital health research examines single interventions or points of contact between patients and technologies, digital services, platforms, or digitally-amplified information. In this talk I present work in progress which instead draws on the medical anthropology concepts of therapeutic itineraries and therapeutic landscapes, adapting these for the digital worlds in which patients now seek care and information. This is both a methodological and a theoretical approach that seeks to understand patients’ therapeutic itineraries as multiply pluralistic – not just moving between different types of providers and systems, but also between and among myriad digital spaces. The digital therapeutic landscape includes remote medical visits, complex digital health devices, social media platforms, electronic medical records and the movement of patient health data, and platforms used to fundraise and advocate for care. Studying digital therapeutic itineraries, and the broader digital therapeutic landscapes in which they take place, can help us to fully understand the risks, opportunities, and choices that patients face in seeking care that is often mediated through digital tools and realms.
Bio:
Nora Kenworthy is an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing and Health Studies at the University of Washington (UW) Bothell, and holds adjunct faculty positions in the Departments of Global Health and Anthropology at UW Seattle. Her research, teaching, and public outreach explores the unintended impacts and politics of charitable health initiatives for communities. More broadly, her work tracks how digital technologies, commercial interests, and political inequities are key determinants shaping health in the US and globally. She is currently finishing up a multi-year project on the use of crowdfunding for personal healthcare expenses, and its implications for health equity and health financing. This work is summarized in her forthcoming book, Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Health Care (MIT Press). Kenworthy received a PhD and MA from Columbia University and a BA from Williams College.