SAANZ2022

Chair: TBA

Kevin Dew (Presenter) - Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington, Kerry Chamberlain -
Massey University, Chris Cunningham - Massey University & Richard Egan - University of Otago
Cancer inequities: Cancer survivors’ access to diagnostics, treatment, and clinical trials

This presentation is based on interviews with 80 people who have survived cancer longer than expected. Participants were identified through the cancer registry, networks, and were respondents to media publicity. As participants had long periods of living with cancer their voyage has required navigating the complexities of healthcare delivery in Aotearoa New Zealand. There were differences in participants’ access to treatments, to diagnostic services, and in getting onto clinical trials. Access could be determined by a wide range of factors. For access to treatment this included participants’ level of citizenship, PHARMAC subsidisation, the stage of disease, waiting times in the public system, and the availability of oncology support over the holiday season. For non-conventional therapeutics access was determined mostly by affordability and knowledge of what was available, but also the legal situation related to some therapeutic practices. Access to diagnostics could be determined by what DHBs had available, what health insurance would cover, and issues of urgency. Getting access to clinical trials could be an outcome of oncologists ‘bending the rules’, lobbying from specialists, and ‘knowing the ropes’ to get onto trials. The presentation considers what hindered and facilitated accessing healthcare resources in life challenging situations.


Muhammad Djindan - Universitas Gadjah Mada & University of Auckland
Not all data are ‘created’ equal: Explaining COVID-19 restriction policy dynamics in Indonesia

The contested COVID-19 restriction policy in Indonesia and its implementation provides an opportunity to reflect on the role of data in policy making retrospectively. This study charts the role of data in contested policy by situating the relationship between data and COVID-19 restriction policy dynamics in Indonesia, zooming in on the province of Jakarta throughout 2020. Using the relational view of data that emphasises meaning, interpretive analysis is employed on data collected from in-person interviews and relevant publicly available data that include news articles, official regulations, and recorded public discussions on YouTube. This study finds that each type of data is tied to particular scientific practice as its epistemic site of creation. As such, the changes in restriction policy status were informed by and shaped through the introduction of public health, economic, and public perception data differently. The use of data in contested policy requires policy-relevant actors to be aware of and sensitive to the possibility of diverging epistemic commitment inherent in each type of data. This is crucial in order to grasp any epistemic divide in contested policy and to harness data’s potential to bridge it accordingly.


Emma Tseris - University of Sydney
“I got locked alone in a room to cry”: Mental health treatment as a form of violence against women 

This presentation will present findings from a project exploring the experiences and effects of involuntary mental health services on women in Australia. Themes identified include: involuntary treatment replicates the dynamics and tactics of gendered violence; treatment involves profound deprivation and losses, with potential implications across the lifecourse; mental health services disrupt and undermine mothering; and recovery is found outside of coercive mental health systems. As mental health services are imbued with assumptions about benevolence, and rhetorical commitments to ‘recovery oriented practices’ and ‘trauma informed care’, they often escape the critical analysis that is needed regarding coercive practices and the devastating impacts of treatment without consent. The increasing ubiquity of mental health campaigns may impinge upon the capacity to critique the inherently conservative, neoliberal, and colonising practices of mental health discourses, even within sociology. Through an action research framework, the project has made space for more collective and creative resistances, situated outside of the biomedical approach, challenging taken-for-granted assumptions about the ‘inevitability’ of involuntary treatment and the perceived lack of alternatives. Indeed, such contributions by psychiatric survivors are valuable in questioning the increasing reliance on and acceptance of mental health discourses within a range of contexts, including universities, workplaces, and schools.