Hosted by EPIC (Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare)
Abstract: People with disabilities often face unfair treatment in both healthcare and society. To improve healthcare and make it more inclusive, research must focus on the unique challenges faced by disabled people. Since they have firsthand experience, disabled individuals are in a strong position to identify problems and suggest improvements in healthcare that others might miss. Academic research informed by patients could play a key role in highlighting these perspectives, and with the right policy support, these insights could help shape better healthcare practices and public life.
Despite the clear benefits of including disabled voices in research, we explore the barriers that disabled people in the UK face when trying to conduct health research. In this paper, we draw on previous research and the personal experience of one of the authors - Joanne Hunt, who has spent over three years trying to find a suitable and accessible PhD program while dealing with energy-limiting conditions and being mostly homebound.
First, we look at the broader issue of how knowledge from disabled people is often undervalued in health research. Second, we focus on how disabled researchers experience exclusion, using ideas from philosophers Kidd and Carel (2017) on ‘strategies of exclusion.’ Finally, we suggest ways to reduce these barriers and improve access for disabled researchers in academia.
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