Nursing prof receives $2.4 million SSHRC partnership grant

Sociologist and nursing professor Fiona Webster received a $2.4 million SSHRC partnership grant to study how marginalization affects chronic pain research. (Western Communications) - Nursing professor Fiona Webster has received a $2.4 million partnership grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to study the concept and practice of patient engagement in pain research. Her project, Toward democratization of health: a sociological exploration of patient engagement in chronic pain research , focuses on people who experience both pain and marginalization, and how the absence of their voices in chronic pain research is problematic. "There's been an evolution that we should engage patients in research," Webster said. "While this  tends to be a heavily promoted practice, the people who are often engaged in research are white, middle-class and with high degrees of health literacy. That excludes those who are suffering from things such as racism, poverty and who we know suffer the worse effects of chronic pain. That has implications for the types of interventions that are developed and for the way research is rolled out and who it is targeted for." Webster, a critical sociologist in the faculty of health sciences, is one of more than 40 Western researchers to recently receive SSHRC funding.