Guest Presentations

Tuesday 31st May:  ‘Social-Scapes of the Walk'

Presenter: Mr Chris Platania-Phung

Research Fellow, Institute for Health and Social Science Research, Melbourne Campus, CQUniversity

Social Scapes of the Walk

Walking is the most common recreational physical activity and found to benefit community health and wellbeing. This talk gives a tour of how the everyday practice of walking has captured the sociological imagination and in particular diverse perspectives on the meanings, pleasures and risks of walking. Implications for walking promotion initiatives will be discussed.

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Thursday 2nd June: ‘A Double Stigma: Combined Physical-Mental Illness and Inequalities in Health Care'

A Double Stigma: combined physical-mental illness & inequalities in health care

There is concern that poorer quality of health care for people classified as having both mental and physical Illness is due to the stigma of mental illness. However physical illness stigma (such as obesity) is not considered, even though attributes viewed as associated with illness (such as obesity) are common for people with serious mental illness. Understanding disparities in care quality may require looking at this double stigma - physical and mental. The presentation looks at the research challenges in this area and the prospect of double pronged stigma reduction approaches to improved quality of health care for all.

Click here for PowerPoint presentation slides 

Biography

Chris has served university posts in various disciplines to gain a comprehensive understanding of inequalities in health and their bearing on community approaches to wellbeing. Previous to CQUniversity he was research assistant on the ARC project  'Never again? The nature and effectiveness of regulatory responses to terrorism, the Esso Longford explosion and the collapse of HIH Insurance' (led by Assoc. Profs. Fiona Haines & Adam Sutton) at the School of Political and Social Sciences, University of Melbourne, a project that involved qualitative and quantitative studies of business compliance, politics and risk management.