FALL/WINTER 2024 Society for the Study of Social Problems Health, Health Policy, and Health Services Division Newsletter IMAGE: VIEW OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, THE LOCATION OF THE SSSP 2025 ANNUAL MEETING In This Issue Calls for Abstracts & Award Nominations 1 Proposed Division Sessions at the 2025 Annual Meeting 2-4 Members on the Job Market 5-6 Division Updates 7-8 Check out our proposed (co)sponsored sessions for SSSP 2025 in this newsletter! Submit your extended abstract at this link: [click here] We are accepting submissions for the Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award and Outstanding Scholarship Award! Information can be found here: [click here] Newsletter Editor: Virginia Kuulei Berndt PAGE 2 Health, Health Policy, and Health Services Division Sponsored Sessions for SSSP 2025 Session 004: Critical Reflections on Mutual Aid and Anticapitalist Approaches to Community and Care Session Type: Critical Dialogue Organizers: Andrew Schoeneman, Bob Spires, & Gabby Gomez Co-Sponsors: Community, Research, & Practices; Conflict, Action, & Social Change; Poverty, Class, & Inequality Session Description: “This session encourages researchers, scholars, social workers, organizational leaders, and community organizers of all backgrounds and professional settings to bring together a diverse collection of works on mutual aid, anticapitalist, and other alternatives to dominant community organizing models. Through a collective dialogue catalyzed by a diverse group presenters reflecting on, developing, and employing alternatives to the dominant models of community change, sessions organizers aim to create a collaborative session drawing from not-for-profit, nongovernmental, community activist, social movement, and social work practice across a number of areas (e.g., health, poverty, housing, criminal justice, disabilities, etc.), including those from global/international experiences and perspectives.” Session 010: Collective Care in Action: The Praxis of Solidarity through Mutual Aid Session Type: Regular Paper Session, Thematic Organizer: Michael Lee Hurst, Jr. Co-Sponsor: Conflict, Social Action, and Change Session Description: “A critical dialogue session through which organizers, activities, and researchers can collaborative discuss, spotlight, and synthesize mutual aid praxis as a transformative and formative practice of community care, social justice, political praxis and solidarity. The work of activist and those outside of academia, especially those from Chicago and Chicago-land area organizations, are encouraged to participate. As a venue for more than just scholars and researchers, this session encourages mutual aid organizers and organizational leaders to not only participate, but lead discussions on their organization, their challenges faced, solutions found, and, in dialogue with others in the session, discuss the connections between and across their experiences and discoveries therein.” The 2025 Annual Meeting will be held at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago. PAGE 3 Health, Health Policy, and Health Services Division Sponsored Sessions for SSSP 2025 Session 049: Pursuing Racial Justice to Improve Health Inequalities Session Type: Regular Paper Session Organizer: Raja Staggers-Hakim Session Description: “Current Heath Sociology and Public Health Scholarship acknowledge the need to eliminate health inequities in order to achieve health justice. However, despite awareness of this great need, much discussion in academic and policy circles are concerned with socioeconomic resources exclusively and neglect how groups from marginalized disadvantaged communities experience multiple oppressions simultaneously and overtime. This session will explore the interface of social protest for human and civil rights that communities are still fighting in the quest for racial justice and good health. Topics are welcome from health, human rights, environmental justice, criminology, education, etc. which make connections between racial justice and human rights related to various social determinants which drive adverse health outcomes.” Session 050: Reproductive Autonomy, Justice, and the Law Session Type: Papers in the Round Session Organizer: Virginia Kuulei Berndt Co-Sponsor: Law & Society Session Description: “Reproductive autonomy and justice encompasses the ability to have children, not have children, and to care for families and communities in safety and with dignity. This session invites submissions on the impact of policies and law on reproductive autonomy and justice at local, national, international, and global levels. We welcome submissions on any topics related to reproduction, including (in)fertility, contraception, abortion, assisted reproductive technology, pregnancy, birth, mothering, and more, in relation to laws and policies.” PAGE 4 Health, Health Policy, and Health Services Division Sponsored Sessions for SSSP 2025 Session 051: Technology, Surveillance and Access to Health Services Session Type: Regular Paper Session Organizer: Yuying Shen Co-Sponsor: Social Problems Theory Session Description: “This session will explore the use - and developments of - technology in healthcare, surveillance of patients and medical providers, and access to services across healthcare services.” Session 052: Insurgent Sociology in Health Care Session Type: Regular Paper Session, Thematic Organizer: William D. Cabin Co-Sponsor: Sociology, Social Work, and Social Welfare Session Description: “The purpose of this session is to engage submitted papers on unique and challenging approaches to approaching health care eligibility, coverage, and delivery, particularly in the emerging electronic age.” PAGE 5 On the Job Market Gabby Gomez Oklahoma State University Website: [link] | E-mail: gabby.gomez@okstate.edu Gabby Gomez is a PhD candidate in the Sociology department at Oklahoma State University (OSU) specializing in inequality, health/medicine, and social movements. Before studying at OSU, Gabby earned an M.A. in Sociology and a graduate certificate in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies from Lehigh University. Her dissertation is an interview study examining weight-inclusive healthcare practitioners participation and experiences in the weight-inclusive healthcare movement. Specifically, she examines 1) how healthcare practitioners become involved in the weight-inclusive healthcare movement and how they learn to deliver weight-inclusive healthcare, 2) what the delivery of weight-inclusive healthcare looks like and how weight-inclusive healthcare practitioners advance health equity and justice through their work, and 3) how they have been personally and professionally impacted by their involvement in the movement. Some of her early findings were reported in a solo-authored article published in the journal Fat Studies, and she has been selected to submit a paper based on this project for the special issue of Work and Occupations on occupational activism. Gabby is passionate about both research and teaching and looks forward to joining a department that enables her to pursue both activities. In addition to teaching three sections of Introduction to Sociology at OSU, she has participated in several teaching workshops through Lehigh University, OSU, and the American Sociological Association. She is prepared to teach courses relating to inequality, social problems, health and healthcare, social movements, social psychology, and gender and sexuality. Gabby has also worked on many collaborative research projects, including Healing Pathways, Together Overcoming Diabetes, and The American Local Leaders Study, funded by the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation, respectively. She is currently the managing editor of The Sociological Quarterly. PAGE 6 On the Job Market Ridwan Islam Sifat University of Maryland, Baltimore County Website: [link] | E-Mail: rsifat1@umbc.edu Ridwan Islam Sifat is a Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy with a concentration on Health Policy at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where he also received his M.P.P. in Public Policy. His research examines public policy and management, focusing on social and health policy for marginalized populations, including gender and sexuality minorities and racial and ethnic groups. He analyzes local government services, structural factors driving marginalization, and the impact of policies in reducing social inequities. His dissertation explores the healthcare experiences of intersex individuals in the United States using Andersen s Behavioral Model of Health Services Use. The research aims to understand how systemic, contextual, and individual factors influence healthcare access and the quality of care for intersex individuals. He is currently a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the UMBC Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health. He has previously represented the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences as a graduate senator in the UMBC Graduate Student Association. He has been recognized with the Adam Yarmolinsky Fellowship and the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi 2024 Love of Learning Award for his academic achievements. Before pursuing his doctoral studies, He was an adjunct Lecturer at Northern University Bangladesh. His research has been published in the Journal of Public Health Policy, Journal of Social and Economic Development, International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Sexuality Research and Social Policy, Journal of Human Rights and Social Work, and Journal of Social Service Research. PAGE 7 Member Updates Publications Agnieszka Doll Doll, Agnieszka. 2024. “Double ethics, double burden: Professionalism, activism, and institutional ethnography.” Pp. 205-229 in Political activist ethnography: Studies in the social relations of struggle, edited by Agnieszka Doll, Laura Bisaillon, and Kevin Walby. Athabasca University Press. [Link] Doll, Agnieszka. 2024. “Making ‘medical’: How psychedelics are becoming legal in Canada.” Dalhousie Law Journal 1(47). [Link] Chandra L. Ford Ford, Chandra. 2024. Racism: Science & Tools for the Public Health Professional. APHA Press. [Link - Discount Available] Deborah Potter Potter, Deborah A. 2024. “Biographical disruption, redefinition, and recovery: Illness identities of women with depression and diabetes.” Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 28(6): 918-936. [Link] Ridwan Islam Sifat Ajoseh, Seun Mauton, Ridwan Islam Sifat, and John Tasheyon Whesu. 2024. “Food-based domestic violence and anemia among women in sexual unions in Nigeria: the effect of urbanization.” Journal of Public Health Policy 45(3): 523-536. [Link] Media Appearances Ridwan Islam Sifat UMBC Magazine: “Meet a Retriever—Ridwan Islam Sifat, international doctoral student in public policy.” [Link] Virginia Kuulei Berndt McDaniel News: “Ginger Berndt named managing editor of the Sociological Forum.” [Link] PAGE 8 Award Ridwan Islam Sifat Ridwan Islam Sifat recently won the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi’s Love of Learning Award. [Link] Job Posting from Shannon Carter: The Department of Sociology at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in the College of Sciences (COS) invites applications for a full-time, 9-month, tenure-earning assistant professor anticipated to begin August 2025. We seek candidates with scholarly expertise in medical sociology who have an active research agenda and a commitment to effective teaching. The ideal candidate will have research and teaching interests in one or more of the following areas: (1) inequalities in health and medicine, (2) health outcomes as they relate to space and/or place, and/or (3) health, science, and technology. We are especially interested in a candidate who can contribute through their research, teaching, and service to the excellence of our academic community and foster an environment in which faculty, staff, and students from a variety of backgrounds, cultures and personal experiences are welcomed and can thrive. More information about the opportunity is available here: University of Central Florida.