We were very lucky to have a guest speaker at last week's RISE Team meeting. Dr. Kamran Ishfaq (Assistant Professor of Sociology, Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan, Pakistan and current Postdoctoral Fellow at UofT Sociology) gave a fascinating and inspiring presentation on barriers to the screening and diagnosis of thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder, in Pakistan.
"Prevention is better than a cure" is the guiding principle behind Dr. Ishfaq's work to develop an accessible and low-barrier educational program for thalassemia screening and diagnosis. His careful analysis takes into account gender, culture, financial strain, and other important sociological factors.
A puzzle that motivates his work is how to adapt strategies that have led to prevention and elimination of thalassemia in Muslim-majority countries like Iran and national contexts like Canada for use in Pakistan.
His fieldwork currently involves a large-scale study inside a public hospital which will hopefully expand into programming and screenings in schools, Universities, and other national institutions.
Dr. Ishfaq's research is high-impact and makes a direct contribution to people's health and well-being. We wish him all the best in the next phase of his research this summer in Multan, and look forward to more conversations with him in Toronto and beyond!
"Prevention is better than a cure" is the guiding principle behind Dr. Ishfaq's work to develop an accessible and low-barrier educational program for thalassemia screening and diagnosis. His careful analysis takes into account gender, culture, financial strain, and other important sociological factors.
A puzzle that motivates his work is how to adapt strategies that have led to prevention and elimination of thalassemia in Muslim-majority countries like Iran and national contexts like Canada for use in Pakistan.
His fieldwork currently involves a large-scale study inside a public hospital which will hopefully expand into programming and screenings in schools, Universities, and other national institutions.
Dr. Ishfaq's research is high-impact and makes a direct contribution to people's health and well-being. We wish him all the best in the next phase of his research this summer in Multan, and look forward to more conversations with him in Toronto and beyond!