Vanessa Peck, a Master’s student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, contacted us to see if any of you were able to help her with her thesis.
Vanessa is a survivor herself and she is studying the gap in state resources between health and illness, particularly for young women. Please read this excerpt from an email she sent us and contact her if you are interested in being interviewed:
I am contacting you because I am researching institutional definitions of eligibility for state resources (such as social assistance, long term disability etc.) and how such definitions pose particular difficulties for those who live in between the statuses of health and illness. The objective of this project is to explore the lived experiences of young women living with cancer and specifically their access to state-funded resources and supports in the current decline of the welfare state and the ways in which illness invisibility may discourage or prevent them from accessing available services.
In order to meet this objective, I am concerned with examining how young women living with cancer understand, negotiate, and experience external structures (such as ODSP eligibility, social rights and illness precariousness) that impact their personal, social and economic wellbeing in relation to accessing state resources in times of illness.
Being diagnosed at age 21 with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, this research is of particular importance to me because of the unique challenges young women face in light of a cancer diagnosis and there has been little research in this area. My goal is to identify the needs and gaps in services and bring what are often thought as personal and private issues to the public sphere and discuss them more broadly at a political level.
Sincerely,
Vanessa Peck (Researcher)
(613) 883-5507
[email protected]
This project has received ethics clearance and has been reviewed by the Carleton University Research Ethics Board. To contact the Carleton University Research Ethics Board please send inquiries to: [email protected]
