My research investigates the interplay of health, medicine, and work and examines how these factors interact to produce inequalities.
Mid-Status Healthcare Professionals
Understanding how individuals of varying statuses interact, vie for power, and accumulate resources has long been of interest to sociologists. Scholars of work are especially interested in how this plays out in organizations, with a particular interest in workers who hold a unique status—that of ‘profession.’ Relying on the case of healthcare, my dissertation examines how medicine has evolved from an institution that was built on the dyadic relationship between a professional (i.e., the doctor) and their client (i.e., the patient) to a complex system of professional workers of varying statuses who specialize in different domains.
My dissertation answers the question: How do mid-status healthcare professionals navigate a system that was built to privilege doctors? I argue that professions have seen a separating of power and expertise in recent decades. While doctors still hold the most power in the medical institution, other healthcare professionals possess greater expertise in their given specialties. With funding from the ASA’s Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, I conducted a two-year, two-site comparative ethnography along with over 90 in-depth interviews with rehabilitation therapists (i.e., speech, physical, and occupational therapists) to examine how mid-status professionals navigate, negotiate, and resist limitations to their professional power.
Legitimacy and Chronic Illness
Another line of my research seeks to understand how health and healthcare inequalities are generated for lay individuals in work and educational contexts. In particular, my research focuses on legitimacy, a social process whereby an individual (or other entity) must demonstrate to relevant social actors that their behavior is appropriate. For individuals with chronic illnesses—which often manifest as an ‘invisible’ trait and can be dynamic in presentation—the legitimacy of their sickness is often called into question. Therefore, chronic illness provides a critical case to understand how the stratification process of legitimacy is patterned by illness in conjunction with other social characteristics.
Social Networks, Social Support, and Health
Another way I approach my research on health inequalities is through the social networks perspective. In this line of research, I broadly seek to understand how individuals from marginalized populations leverage network ties to meet critical support functions, including help accessing resources, seeking novel information, performing daily tasks, or bettering their health. Individuals experiencing complex, chronic conditions often face diminished social networks. My research seeks to understand how these individuals compensate for their limited networks while also navigating stressors caused by their conditions.