Research at the CHS
Overview
The Centre's title conveys our general area of research: various aspects of health and well-being in a social or other context. As such, research at the Centre spans diverse content areas, disciplinary backgrounds, methods and paradigms (see Interdisciplinary focus at the CHS). In addition, research at the CHS is often integrated with community development, advocacy, curriculum development, teaching, and other activities.
In contrast to the traditional discipline- or content-related way in which departments or centres are defined, the 'glue' that holds us together as a Centre is a set of shared underlying values or principles of research (see below). These research principles are applied to a range of content areas, as outlined in the second list below. Many CHS research initiatives and researchers bridge more than one content area.
Key underlying research principles at CHS:
- Critical focus on social aspects of health and well-being.
- Focus on investigating and redressing health inequalities.
- Emphasis on meta-disciplinary approach to research (defined below).
- Focus on how we do research, with emphasis on values and ethics as well as reflexivity in research.
- Ensure strong links between research and practice/communities/policy/teaching.
- Maintain and develop synergies between theory and practice.
- Further develop links between different disciplinary approaches to research that does not just merely combine various disciplinary approaches but forms new and innovative synergistic approaches to health research. Two CHS researchers have coined the term 'meta-disciplinary' to describe this, referring to something that rises above, integrates, or adds a new level to the research at hand, rather than simply parallel investigations from different disciplinary perspectives.
Key research content areas, addressed through a wide range of approaches:
- Aboriginal health
- Social health
- History of health and healthcare
- Place and health
- Work and health
- Health and culture
- Social connectedness and health
- Health inequalities
- Ethics and health care practice
- Illness understandings and experiences
- Health governance and policy
- Public health policy
- Action research in health