Health and Mental Health

Professor David Pettinicchio recently co-authored the article “What a distanced holiday season means for people with disabilities and chronic health conditions” with Professor of Sociology Michelle Maroto (University of Alberta) in The Conversation. The article outlines how many Canadians and Americans opted to spend time with friends and family over the Thanksgiving holidays against public … Read More

Professor Akwasi Owusu-Bempah’s comments appeared in an article in the National Post titled “Police shootings in 2020: The effect on officers and those they are sworn to protect.” The article reviews the statistics of police shootings in Canada in 2020, comparing patterns among the 55 cases of this year and across some year-to-year trends. Professor … Read More

Professor Jerry Flores recently published an article titled “ICE detainees’ alleged hysterectomies recall a long history of forced sterilizations” on theconversation.com. Flores recounts the longstanding history of forced sterilizations in U.S. institutions to expose the ongoing harm on Latina, migrant, refugee, Black, Indigenous and at-risk women in the medical sphere. Professor Flores traces stories of … Read More

Dr. Ito Peng recently participated in a Massey Dialogue event titled “COVID, the old and Canada: What’s wrong with us?” alongside former Dean of Nursing Dr. Dorothy Pringle and doctoral candidate Husayn Marani, moderated by Senior Fellow Michael Valpy. This discussion was prompted by the overwhelming proportion of COVID-related deaths among the elderly in long-term care … Read More

Professor Scott Schieman recently published two articles on The Star about the changing work-life conflict and workplace culture for parents and non-parents during the pandemic. His first article titled “The pandemic has decreased work-life conflict for Canadians without kids — but parents aren’t so lucky” uses data collected from September 2019 to June 2020 to observe … Read More

Professor Tahseen Shams recently published a blog post titled “We need a more globalized response to pandemics for immigrant integration” on oecd-development-matters.org. This blog is part of a series observing COVID-19 in developing countries and analyses the roles of immigrants and their descendants in the U.S. society during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this blog post, … Read More

Professor Akwasi Owusu-Bempah recently appeared on an episode of The Agenda with Steve Paikin alongside former RCMP officer Chad Haggerty, London police chief Stephen Williams and staff lawyer at Black Legal Action Centre Fareeda Adam. They discussed the role of police in society, given recent events in the U.S. and Canada. In this conversation, Professor Akwasi … Read More

MA student Abtin Parnia recently co-authored a paper entitled, “Trends in socioeconomic inequalities in premature and avoidable mortality in Canada, 1991–2016” in the CMAJ. The authors find that mortality inequalities between the rich and poor is widening in Canada.  One of the reasons for this increasing inequality is likely the retrenchment of the welfare state, … Read More

Professor Scott Schieman wrote an article in The Toronto Star, with University of Toronto undergraduate student Ryu Won Kang. The article The distracted worker is the greatest perceived threat to employers despite all the benefits of working from home looks at employers’ concerns of increased distractions experienced by employees while working from home.  To some employers, … Read More

Professor Scott Schieman recently spoke with Piya Chattopadhyay on her new show The Sunday Magazine on CBC Radio about how the covid-19 pandemic has impacted our lives and society as a whole. Professor Schieman outlines an array of challenges Canadians face with regards to parenthood, gender disparities, the socio-economic divide, and the effects of loneliness on … Read More

Professor David Pettinicchio recently co-wrote an op-ed in The Toronto Star discussing the negative impacts wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic on Canadians with disabilities and long-term chronic health conditions.  Although most people with disabilities and chronic health conditions who applied for the CERB found the process accessible, they expressed anxieties about what will happen in the … Read More

Congratulations to recent PhD graduate Atsushi Narisada who recently received the Best Dissertation Award for his thesis titled “The Social Antecedents and Consequences of the Sense of Distributive Justice.” This award honours dissertations with excellence of writing and discussion in a sociological topic in the Sociology of Mental Health section in the American Sociological Association … Read More

Professor Scott Schieman  recently spoke to U of T News about his research on the impact of work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Professor Schieman’s recently funded project will build on work he had already begun tracking the changing work and family lives of Canadians. The work will now, however, include a study of the impact … Read More

Professor Ito Peng recently wrote an article for Policy Options, the newsletter of the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP). In it, she discusses the lessons that Canada can gain from studying long-term care schemes in Japan, Korea and Germany. She argues that the implementation of public insurance plans and strong regulations to support … Read More

Professor Akwasi Owusu-Bempah recently spoke to the Toronto Star about the movement to defund police in favour of community organizations  especially in the cases of mental health calls. We have included an excerpt of the article below. Professor Owusu-Bempah is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, with teaching responsibilities at the … Read More

Professor Joe Hermer has recently co-authored an article in The Conversation discussing the need to protect the homeless during the pandemic. The article warns that police enforcing Ontario’s Safe Streets Act that targets homeless people will put them in danger, not only with the law, but also risk spreading the pandemic. Professor Hermer is an … Read More

Many of the Faculty in the Sociology Department have recently adjusted their research to address issues arising as a result of COVID-19 as well as the social distancing and economic shutdown that have been put in place to contain the pandemic. Four sociology faculty members have recently had their projects funded by the Toronto COVID-19 … Read More

PhD candidate Anson Au recently wrote an op-ed published by South China Morning Post, entitled “K-pop deaths show East Asia must end the stigma, and the solitude, that surrounds mental health.” The op-ed discusses the deaths of Korean pop stars Goo Hara and Sulli and the stigma surrounding mental health in East Asia. He argues … Read More

Ph.D. Candidate Patricia Louie has published an article in the Journal of Society and Mental Health, entitled “Revisiting the Cost of Skin Color: Discrimination, Mastery, and Mental Health among Black Adolescents.” This study aims to investigate whether there are significant associations between skin tone and depression in a population of black adolescents. In particular, Louie … Read More