Theory and health disparities: Explaining the relevance of theory in public health research in India.

This paper aims to address the concern that quantitative public health studies do not integrate theoretical considerations. This qualitative study uses content analysis to explore the application of theory in Indian public health articles listed on PubMed. Social determinants such as poverty, income, social class, education, gender, caste, socioeconomic position, socioeconomic status, immigrant status, and wealth were the keywords used to identify the articles analysed in this study. From a selection of 91 public health articles, we identified potential theoretical frameworks based on the pathways/recommendations/explanations mentioned. Additionally, using the case of tuberculosis in India, we highlight how theoretical perspectives play a critical role in providing a holistic view of major health challenges. Finally, by emphasising the need to adopt a theoretical perspective in empirical quantitative research on public health in India, we hope to motivate scholars to include a theory or theoretical paradigm in their future research.

Examining the significance of ethics during Covid-19: Overview of the proceedings of the 8th National Bioethics Conference, 2020.

The year 2020 will go down in history as the year of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the enormous challenges it posed to ordinary people and experts across disciplines, worldwide. Covid-19, which broke out in Wuhan in December 2019, soon spread rapidly in 2020 (1), till on March 11, the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, worldwide there have been a total of 173,331,478 cases of Covid-19 and 3,735,571 deaths (2).

The Black Lives Matter movement and health inequalities.

With the recent Black Lives Matter movement, existing racial inequalities in various sectors of the United States have regained prominence. Due to the pandemic, statistics on racial disparities in the health sector have been aggravated. On a related note, while the #Black Lives Matter movement received substantial support from India's online community, deeply entrenched inequalities in terms of caste, community and gender in India's health sector need to be critically evaluated as well. This paper is an attempt to understand how the awareness generated by the Black Lives Matter movement could be an opportunity to address structural inequalities in India's own public health system.

Growing Old in a Transnational Setting: Investigating Perceptions of Ageing and Changing Filial Ties Among Older Indians in Saskatoon.

Numerous studies have examined the experience of growing old in a transnational context among Indians. However, in most of these studies, the older adults had immigrated as senior citizens to be with their adult children. Indians who have grown old in transnational settings have not been examined in detail in the gerontological scholarship. Adopting a cross-cultural lens, the present study focusses on perceptions of ageing among older Indians who have grown old in the city of Saskatoon. The study demonstrates how these older Indians refute the Successful Ageing model and accept their physical weaknesses in their course of ageing. Additionally, the study also examines how caregiving arrangements and intergenerational relationships are shaped among these older Indians and their adult children, in a transnational city, such as Saskatoon. Finally, the study highlights how later life gender roles are constructed in a transnational backdrop.

The ethical challenges of field research: A personal narrative.

One of the biggest components of the disciplines, Sociology and Social Anthropology is fieldwork. Despite the significance of fieldwork as a method, there is limited scholarship on the myriad experiences of the fieldworker. This commentary emphasises the need to document field narratives of researchers, while using the personal field experience of the author as a prototype. The author encountered these experiences in 2016 as part of an independent and self-funded study (Understanding aging in old age homes of Delhi, India) that she had conducted in Delhi post the submission of her PhD thesis titled: Three essays in aging: Social capital, family dynamics and transnational arrangements. The said thesis was completed at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, (pp: 1-169) from the year 2013-2018. In particular, the commentary sheds light on the ethical challenges faced during fieldwork. Specifically, this commentary, against the backdrop of the author's encounters in an old age home, analyses the importance of primary themes such as the subjective-objective approach, passionate detachment, rapport building, critical reflexivity and the insider-outsider perspective while conducting fieldwork.