Upcoming conference on medical tourism - Rikkyo University, Niisa, Japan - 18-19 July 2014

Medical Tourism In Asia: Current Trends and Issues
Conference Programme

18 July 2014 - At Rikkyo University, Niiza campus (In English)
11:00-12:30 Welcome / Opening remarks by Tsutomu INAGAKI
Session 1: Medical tourism and national development policy

• Mika TOYOTA ‘Medical tourism as national economic development in Asia: comparative case study of Singapore and Thailand versus Japan and Taiwan’
• Toshiki MANO ‘The situation of medial tourism policy in Japan and Asia’
• YANXIA Zhang ‘The rise of Chinese birth tourism: getting on the fast track to superior citizenship’

12:30-13:30 Lunch Break 

13:30-15:00 Session 2: Medical tourism as a service industry

• Mayumi ONO ‘Retirement migration facilitating Elderly Care Service: The case of Malaysia and Thailand’
• Timothy LEE ‘Current issues of the medical tourism industry: the case of  South Korea’
• Meghann ORMOND ‘Intermediaries, Facilitators, Agents, and Guides: Steering International Medical Travel to Malaysia’
• Session Commentator: Takashi KAWABATA

15:00-15:30 Break 

15:30-17:00 Session 3: Reproductive travel and ethics

• Danicar MARIANO ‘The Bioethics Advisory Committee’s role in motivating Singaporeans to become Fertility Tourists’
• CHEE Heng Leng ‘Moral Discourse in medical tourism’
• Andrea WHITTAKER ‘From intimate industry to rotten trade: reproductive travel in Southeast Asia’
• Session Commentator: Meghann ORMOND

19 July 2014 - At Rikkyo University, Ikebukuro campus (With simultaneous English-Japanese interpretation)
13:00-14:05 Keynote / 基調講演 

• Speaker: Andrea WHITTAKER (Monash University, Australia / モナシュ大学) ‘Questions, controversies and challenges in cross border reproductive care in Asia’
• Commentator: Namie TSUJIGAMI, Associate Professor, University of Tokyo / コメンテーター　辻上　奈美恵　(東京大学　特准教授)

14:05-14:15 Break / 休憩

14:15-16:00 Panel session - The current state of medical tourism in Asia and its challenges / パネル発表 ７名の発表者がアジアの医療ツーリズムの現状分析と課題を提示 
Moderator: Shinji SHIGEMATSU, Professor Emeritus, Nagoya University) / [司会者:　重松伸司　名古屋大学　名誉教授 ]

• Overview of Asia - アジア圏の医療ツーリズムの特色と概要 (Meghann ORMOND, Wageningen University, The Netherlands) 
• Japan - 日本の事例　(Toshiki Mano, Tama University / 真野俊樹、多摩大学)
• Korea - 韓国の事例　(Timothy LEE, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University / 立命館アジア太平洋大学)
• India - インドの事例　(Masanori KONDO, International Christian University / 近藤正規、国際基督教大学)
• Thailand - タイの事例　(Mika TOYOTA, Rikkyo University / 豊田三佳、立教大学)
• Malaysia - マレーシアの事例　(CHEE Heng Leng, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia)
• Singapore - シンガポールの事例 (Danicar MARIANO, National University of Singapore, Singapore)

16:00-16:20 Break / 休憩　

16:20-17:00　Discussion / ディスカッション

Tourism and travel-related sessions at the 2014 ISA World Congress of Sociology - Yokohama, Japan

Planned sessions and dates/time subject to further changes -- visit http://www.isa-sociology.org/congress2014/rc/rc.php?n=RC50

Conference programme now online: https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2014/webprogram/start.html 

In alphabetical order:

Thursday, July 17, 2014: 03:30 PM - 05:20 PM

Beyond the Gaze. Tourist Experiences with Senses Other than Sight

Session Organizer
Jens Kr. Steen JACOBSEN, Institute of Transport Economics, Norway, jsj@toi.no
There is more to travel than sightseeing: travel experiences are not just in the eye of the beholder but also in the ears, palate, nose and hands. Tourist experiences are both corporeal and multisensory, although vision is a dominant mode of consciousness in the modern world and some 90% of our perceptual intake is visual – while much of the rest is auditory and tactile. What one might call polysensualism in tourism is a manifestation of the increased use of senses other than vision in travel experiences. Tours are partly about new tastes, smells, sights, sounds and other feelings. Taste is perhaps considered more important than smell as a desirable and sought-after experience of place. Food is to a certain extent regarded as a central ingredient in place sensation. Because people cannot stop sounds, they are especially vulnerable to sounds in the experience of place. Haptic tourist experiences are also under-researched, that is, the tactile receptivity of the skin and body movements through the environment. This session invites presentations that include for instance studies of tourists themselves, tourism providers, travelogues and promotional material. Conceptual papers on tourist experiences with senses other than sight are also welcome.

Saturday, July 19, 2014: 08:30 AM - 10:20 AM

Ethical Dimensions of Tourism Practices: Tourism and its Social Contributions in and beyond Japan

Session Organizer
Megumi DOSHITA, Tama University, Japan, doshita@tama.ac.jp
Nowadays, many people are willing to contribute to different communities and societies through tourism practices, for the purpose of, not momentary pleasure, but being acknowledged as useful individuals and actualising their own ideal societies. In Japan, a number of city dwellers have joined agricultural experience programmes to revitalise depopulated rural villages, and many people have taken volunteer trips to disaster-stricken areas in Tohoku to support their recovery. In East Asia, there are some national conflicts among the countries, yet individual tourists explore neighbouring countries, appreciate their culture and interact with local people.
In this century, the discussion of ethical and philosophical issues of tourism has become fruitful, and a number of papers have been published with reference to Western philosophies and/or case studies in less developed countries. There seem to be few contributions from the Far East both academically and practically, even though a variety of organisations including project groups at universities conduct tourism-related programmes for social contributions and a number of participants empathise and are involved in them. The main aim of this session is to share and examine various projects and practices in and beyond Japan in order to enrich the understanding of ethical dimensions of tourism.

Friday, July 18, 2014: 05:30 PM - 07:20 PM

Experiences and Narratives of Travel and Mobility

Session Organizers
Silke LAUX, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, silke.laux@hwr-berlin.de 
Johannes BECKER, University of Göttingen, Germany, johannes.becker@sowi.uni-goettingen.de

This session focuses on experiences of people being ‘on the move’. How are these experiences shaped and expressed while travelling? And what role do they play afterwards, for example in the daily lives, and life histories of travellers? If mobility is an ideal of the ‘modern global citizen’, travel experiences as well as narrative and other representations of them gain high importance in the actors’ lives. Travel experiences transform values (e.g. independence and creativity), as well as identities/belongings. They influence the construction of biographies and serve as a source for professional advancement. Thus, there is an increasing need to look at what happens not only while, but also before and after travelling. However, the assumption that “we are all tourists now” does not take into account that participation in mobility highly differs and ranges from frequent and occasional travelling to non-travelling. This opens up questions including: in what ways do economic and social imbalances shape experiences of mobility? How does a highly mobile class negotiate travel experiences with less mobile contemporaries and in between generations? Finally, taking the actors’ own narratives of travelling and mobility seriously might help to disentangle well-known terminological difficulties that have developed in this specific research field: Who is (still) a tourist, who is ‘hyper-mobile’, already a part-time dweller, a ‘modern nomad’, or a migrant? Contributions are welcome that deal with how experiences are shaped while travelling; the role of travelling in biographies, in families, within different generations; narrations about travelling and other representations such as pictures, videos, social media, and blogs; meaning-making, changes and mediations of travel experiences through (re-)telling; the role of images and discourses in forming travel experiences; interdependencies of class, gender, social, religious, national or ethnic belongings and travel experiences/narrations; lacking experiences of travelling; actor-centred methodology in tourism research.

Friday, July 18, 2014: 10:30 AM - 12:20 PM

Festivals and Cultural Tourism

Session Organizer
Leif SELSTAD, University of Stavanger, Norway, leif.selstad@uis.no 

Festivals and special events attract both domestic and international tourists all over the world. A case in point is traditional festivals in Japan, that long have been attractive to tourists and sightseers, and provide a wide range of experiences, from onlookers to active participation by so-called ‘festival buffs’. Festivals take many forms, and it seems necessary to develop a more varied and multifaceted scholarly discourse on tourism directed at celebratory cultural events. 
This session calls for papers that take a closer look at festivals and cultural tourism. One pertinent question may be to what extent tourists are able to understand and appreciate festivals and related cultural events, which may offer a bewildering diversity of impressions and expressions. Such experiences may be hard to comprehend even for practitioners, yet tourists often express an appreciation of the colour and pageantry of special cultural events. A wider issue of relevance to this session is the need to assess and evaluate festivals and cultural events as a growing and developing part of today’s late modern tourism landscape. All papers dealing with these issues will be welcome.

Thursday, July 17, 2014: 08:30 AM - 10:20 AM

New Developments of Medical Tourism in Asia: The Cross-roads of Economics and Ethics

Session Organizer
Mika TOYOTA, Rikkyo University, Japan, toyotamika@rikkyo.ac.jp

International medical tourism, namely people travelling across national borders in search of medical care, has been fast developing worldwide over the last decades. Sociology has, up to now, focused on the global economic inequalities that drive medical travel, for instance how medical tourism enables Western patients to take advantage of the low costs in medical care and other related services in developing countries, especially in Asia. This trend is in turn interpreted as resulting from neoliberalism, especially the privatization of medical care and the ascendance of the market globally. However, recent work in various disciplines has called attention to more nuanced social, political, cultural, emotional and moral dynamics shaping these international movements. Papers at this panel, all based on field research and documentary analysis; shed light on new developments in medical tourism in Asia. First, all the articles, especially Toyota’s, point to a clear trend of regionalization in Asia. More and more countries target patients from the region instead of from the West. Second, there is a diversification of the content of medical tourism. The articles by Whittaker and by Ormond for instance discuss the co-existence of high-end and low-end medical ‘rotten trade’ in body parts and trafficking of people it can entail travel. Third, as Chee and Mariano detail in their articles, which are strongly corroborated by the others, the development of medical tourism is to a great extent driven by state policies, shaped by regulations and intermediaries, and is laden with moral concerns, instead of being dictated by single market logic. The session comprises researchers from sociology as well as from neighbouring disciplines such as geography, anthropology and social policy. Paper contributors are based in five countries (Japan, Singapore, Australia, the Netherlands, and Malaysia), covering the empirical data from the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan.

Thursday, July 17, 2014: 10:30 AM - 12:20 PM

Problems and Solutions in Intangible Heritage and World Heritage Site Tourism

Session Organizers
Ge RONGLING, Xiamen University, China, gerongling@gmail.com 
Yujie ZHU, Heidelberg University, Germany, yujie@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de

With an emphasis on East Asia, this session invites papers that examine the interplay of multiple actors shaping the forms and values of intangible heritage in World Heritage Site tourism. Topics we wish to explore include how do States adapt UNESCO Conventions on Intangible Heritage and World Heritage Sites to fulfil their national goals? How do scholars support local governments for nomination, documentation and conservation? How does local industry utilize the branding of “intangible heritage” and/or ”world heritage site” to satisfy the imaginaries of modern urban consumers? How do these notions shape local community value systems and identities? We aim to explore the problems and solutions of intangible heritage in world heritage site tourism.

Thursday, July 17, 2014: 07:30 PM - 08:50 PM

RC50 Business Meeting

Session Organizers
Margaret SWAIN, University of California Davis, USA, mbswain@ucdavis.edu 
Bihu WU, Peking University, China, wubihu.bes@gmail.com 
Jan Te KLOEZE, Foundation Wageningen International Centre of Excellence on Development of Sustainable Leisure, Netherlands, jan.tekloeze@wice-dsl.nl

Friday, July 18, 2014: 08:30 AM - 10:20 AM

Science and Power Relations in Tourism Studies

Session Organizers
Rami ISAAC, Breda University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands, isaac.r@nhtv.nl 
Erdinc CAKMAK, Breda University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands, cakmak.e@nhtv.nl 

Science has been depicted most often as an isolated phenomenon (Popper, 1963; Lakatos & Musgrave, 1970) that is driven forwards by internal mechanisms. Scientific progress has been imagined as a self-corrective development steered by an internal criterion like testability or falsifiability. In the last two decades this image has become more relative through the acceptance of external developments co-determinant for scientific development (Kuhn, 1965; Cohn, 2012). Yet, science is an embedded phenomenon that is always heavily influenced by the surrounding environment. This makes us sensitive to the political, economical, socio-cultural and technological influences on scientific developments. This, certainly, goes for the tourism field of social scientific research (Tribe, 2003). In this session the focus will be on the various types of power constellations (Foucault, 1981; Latour, 2005) that have influenced the development of tourism knowledge from its initiation. Possible themes include the origins of tourism studies, post-colonialism and tourism, political (in)stability and the (lack of) development of tourism knowledge, lingua franca, and inclusions/exclusion - silenced voices and inequality.

Friday, July 18, 2014: 03:30 PM - 05:20 PM

Tourism Issues in Japan and China

Session Organizer
Margaret SWAIN, University of California Davis, USA, mbswain@ucdavis.edu
Keynote speaker: Nelson GRABURN, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Drawing on decades of interaction with Japanese and Chinese colleagues, Nelson Graburn charts the rise of Tourism Studies in Japan and China and current issues now being addressed.

Thursday, July 17, 2014: 05:30 PM - 07:20 PM

Tourist Experiences and Gender

Session Organizer
Bente HEIMTUN, University of Tromsø, Norway, bente.heimtun@hifm.no 

Over the last two decades gender analysis has become more important in tourism studies and has produced new gender aware concepts and insights into the lives of tourists, locals and employees. Gender and the holiday experience form part of a rich range of discourses and debates in social science, and within the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary field of tourism. Here researchers draw on the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, geography and the interdisciplinary field of gender studies. In the last few years studies of differences within gender have been undertaken leading to more nuanced concepts and understanding of women’s holiday experiences over the life course. Moreover, there has also been an increased interest in understanding masculine tourism practices. For instance, such knowledge is found in studies on sex tourism and gay tourism as well as research on stag tourism and men’s backpacking experiences. In spite of this development much research the tourist experience has often remind ‘gender-blind’. Papers are invited that focuses on the tourist experience and gender. Topics could include: gendered tourist experience performances which embrace tourists and other actors involved; male and female tourist experiences over the life course, gendered tourist experiences related to various types of tourism practices such as backpacking, package tour holidays, city breaks, adventure travels, sightseeing, outdoor recreation and so on.

Joint Sessions

Click on the session title to read its description and the scheduled day/time.

Global Environmental Degradation: Leisure and Tourism Perspectives

Joint session of RC13 Sociology of Leisure [host committee] and RC50 International Tourism

Tourism and Migration

Joint session of RC31 Sociology of Migration [host committee] and RC50 International Tourism

CFP: “Health impacts as a consequence of regional integration in the ASEAN region”

CALL FOR PAPERS: “Health impacts as a consequence of regional integration in the ASEAN region”

HealthSpace.Asia in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation and Thailand Research Center for Health Services System, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, calls for submission of papers to a Special Issue in Global Health Action addressing different health impacts from regional integration in ASEAN.

Background:
One of the major public policy topics discussed in the Southeast Asia region is regional integration. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) comprises 10 countries in the Southeast Asia region that share a common interest in building economic and social development. In the ASEAN Charter, ratified in 2008, the 10 members agreed to jointly establish an ASEAN community with “one vision, one identify, one community”. Underlying the community concept are the three pillars of economy, political security, and socio-cultural issues. The goal was set to establish an ASEAN economic community by 2015 with the transformation of ASEAN into a “single market and production base” with many areas of trade liberalization and agreements to facilitate such an achievement. The region aims to move towards an ASEAN socio-cultural and politically secure community, with integrated and interdependent policy development and implementation for regional benefits. In addition, a number of economic and social development programs are in place to expand connectivity and movement of people, goods and services in many of the countries in the region, including the mega-plan to invest in infrastructure projects in Thailand, an agreement to build a high-speed railway system connecting Singapore and Malaysia, and linking Laos and its neighboring countries.

Such changes can impact health in many ways. International agreements on trade liberalization and improved transport and communication infrastructures will likely lead to an increased movement of people, goods, and services across national borders. Migration of health professionals, patients, and cross-country dissemination of germs and diseases or substandard food and harmful products are more likely to occur. Integration of various markets into a single market is also a likely consequence resulting in the consolidation of pricing, and as such it may impact differential pricing and access to medicines and technologies in a number of countries in the region.

Objectives:
- To promote academic research on multisectoral health-related policies in relation to regional integration in the ASEAN countries;
- To improve research and scientific writing capacity among young health policy and system researchers in the ASEAN countries;
- To promote sustained networking through collaborative research work in HealthSpace.Asia; and
- To provide scientific evidence for policy changes and interventions in preparation for the upcoming regional integration movement in the ASEAN countries

Theme of Supplement: “Health impacts as a consequence of regional integration in the ASEAN region”

Key Issues:
Under the main theme, review or research papers and cross country analyses should cover one or more of the following topics:
- Universal health coverage and health care access across the region
- Non-communicable diseases management
- Cross-border epidemics
- Medical tourism
- Comparative assessment of alcohol and tobacco control policy
- Population mobility and potential health impacts
- Environmental health
- Price and access to medicines and health technology
- Regulations and control of counterfeit and substandard medicines
- Health human resources standards and planning
- Health system reform and health service development

Criteria:
- The Review/research papers must address one or more of the focus issues in relation to a particular country or across several countries in the ASEAN region.
- Papers must be original research papers that have not previously been submitted to, or accepted by, any other journal.
- Decisions to accept papers will be based on a single-blind peer review process

Important dates:
Feb 1, 2014 Launch of the call
May 15, 2014 Deadline for submission of manuscripts to Global Health Action
May – Aug 16, 2014 Peer review and revision process
Aug 17, 2014: Deadline for submission of accepted and final version of manuscripts
Sep - Oct 2014 Publication of papers

Manuscript preparation:
Manuscripts should closely follow the recommended style of Global Health Action. Manuscripts for this special issue should be submitted via the journal’s website under the section “ASEAN Integration”. Please make this selection when submitting the manuscript. Please indicate in the cover letter that your manuscript belongs to this section.

For questions related to this special issue in Global Health Action, please contact Associate Prof. Nawi Ng, Managing Editor of Global Health Action (nawi.ng [at] epiph.umu.se)

For questions related to Health Space Asia, please contact:
Kyaw Min Soe, MBBS.MPH
Technical Coordinator
HealthSpace.Asia Admin
Tel: (+66) 2 252-7864 ext. 103, Mobile: (+66) 8 90195175
Fax: (+66) 2 256-4292
Email: tc [at] healthspace.asia

New report: 'Implications for the NHS of inward and outward medical tourism'

The Medical Tourism Research project, funded by the NIHR and led by Prof Neil Lunt from York University (UK), is now complete. The final project's 250+ page report, entitled 'Implications for the NHS of inward and outward medical tourism: a policy and economic analysis using literature review and mixed-methods approaches' can be found here: http://www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/104067/FullReport-
hsdr02020.pdf

Background

The study examined the implications of inward and outward flows of private patients for the NHS across a range of specialties and services.

Objectives

To generate a comprehensive documentary review; to better understand information, marketing and advertising practices; examine the magnitude and economic and health-related consequences of travel; understand decision-making frames and assessments of risk; understand treatment experience; elicit the perspectives of key stakeholder groups; and map out medical tourism development within the UK.

Design and participants

The study integrated policy analysis, desk-based work, economic analysis to estimate preliminary costs, savings and NHS revenue, and treatment case studies. The case studies involved synthesising data sources around bariatric, fertility, cosmetic, dental and diaspora examples. Overall, we drew on a mixed-methods approach of qualitative and quantitative data collection. The study was underpinned by a systematic overview and a legal and policy review. In-depth interviews were carried out with those representing professional associations, those with clinical interests and representative bodies (n = 16); businesses and employees within medical tourism (n = 18); NHS managers (n = 23); and overseas providers. We spoke to outward medical travellers (46 people across four treatment case studies: bariatric, fertility, dental and cosmetic) and also 31 individuals from UK-resident Somali and Gujarati populations.

Results

The study found that the past decade has seen an increase in both inward and outward medical travel. Europe is both a key source of travellers to the UK and a destination for UK residents who travel for medical treatment. Inward travel often involves either expatriates or people from nations with historic ties to the UK. The economic implications of medical tourism for the NHS are not uniform. The medical tourism industry is almost entirely unregulated and this has potential risks for those travelling out of the UK. Existing information regarding medical tourism is variable and there is no authoritative and trustworthy single source of information. Those who travel for treatment are a heterogeneous group, with people of all ages spread across a range of sociodemographic groups. Medical tourists do not appear to inform their decision-making with hard information and consequently often do not consider all risks. They make use of extensive informal networks such as treatment-based or cultural groups. Motivations to travel are in line with the findings of other studies. Notably, cost is never a sole motivator and often not the primary motivation for seeking treatment abroad.

Limitations

One major limitation of the study was the abandonment of a survey of medical tourists. We sought to avoid an extremely small survey, which offers no real insight. Instead we redirected our resources to a deeper analysis of qualitative interviews, which proved remarkably fruitful. In a similar vein, the economic analysis proved more difficult and time consuming than anticipated. Data were incomplete and this inhibited the modelling of some important elements.

Conclusions

In 2010 at least 63,000 residents of the UK travelled abroad for medical treatment and at least 52,000 residents of foreign countries travelled to the UK for treatment. Inward referral and flows of international patients are shaped by clinical networks and longstanding relationships that are fostered between clinicians within sender countries and their NHS counterparts. Our research demonstrated a range of different models that providers market and by which patients travel to receive treatment. There are clearly legal uncertainties at the interface of these and clinical provision. Patients are now travelling to further or ‘new’ markets in medical tourism. Future research should: seek to better understand the medium- and long-term health and social outcomes of treatment for those who travel from the UK for medical treatment; generate more robust data that better capture the size and flows of medical travel; seek to better understand inward flows of medical travellers; gather a greater level of information on patients, including their origins, procedures and outcomes, to allow for the development of better economic costing; explore further the issues of clinical relationships and networks; and consider the importance of the NHS brand.

Funding

The National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research programme.

New book: Trade in Health: Economics, Ethics and Public Policy

 Reisman, David. (2014) Trade in Health: Economics, Ethics and Public Policy, London: Edward Elgar.

Once exports and imports meant agriculture and industry. In the global economy and the electronic age, trade is also expanding into the service sector. This timely book closely examines trade in health. It documents the growth of a cross-national service that in the past was mainly consumed at home. Following from his highly successful book Health Tourism, Professor David Reisman offers a comprehensive and searching multidisciplinary account of the way in which medical services, patients, capital and professionals are making up a global healthcare economy that crosses borders. He reflects on their pursuit of lower prices, better quality and a differentiated product, and suggests that public policy is essential if the ethical capital of interdependent societies is not to be eroded by the international market in health and care. Written in a concise and lucid form, this original book will be of great interest to all people interested in the internationalization of health care. Combining theory and empirical evidence from economics, tourism and medical care, scholars involved in health policy and social administration will find much of significance in this authoritative study.

CFP: Care As Labor?

SCA Biennial Meeting, 2014: The Ends of Work
Detroit, Michigan, May 9-10, 2014

PANEL TITLE: *Care As Labor?*

This panel is aimed at contributing to the recent anthropological interest in care by interrogating the relationship between care and labor. Earlier social science research on care, such as that by Arlie Hochschild, tended to examine care as affective labor that was conditioned by, and in turn shaped, a certain political economic order. In recent years, anthropologists have increasingly tasked themselves with finding care as affective overflow that can bring about ethical and ontological transformations beyond market, medical, or other putatively neoliberal forms of personhood or sociality. While we appreciate this attention to care in anthropology, we are concerned that an easy designation of care over against politics and political economy might run the risk of romanticizing the everyday, glossing over what exactly people do when they argue in terms of care, and reproducing the problematic distinctions of public vs. private, personal vs. political, etc. Therefore, in this panel we seek to bring the diverse concerns with care together, re-examine the relationship between care and labor, and critically appraise the theoretical usefulness of the concept of care itself.

Questions of interest include (but are not limited to) the following: What are the conditions on which care gains the recognition as labor? In lacking or gaining such recognition, how do the putatively private and intimate relations of care reproduce, destabilize, or transform our imaginations of political economy and the public? In turn, what labor, as a category, can tell us about care? What can be the ends of care, for example in terms of the life forms and socialities that it seeks to produce? If care is entangled with complicated affects such as fear or disgust, and if it is carried out in acts of control, confinement or violence, then how should we rethink the ethics and politics of care, its utopia and dystopia? Moreover, in face of such practical ambiguity and affective ambivalence, what does an analytical designation of care in ethnographic situations reveal or conceal?

If you are interested, *please submit your abstract to Zhiying Ma (zhiyingma@uchicago.edu) by Jan 24th, 2014, along with your name, contact information, and institutional affiliation.

Special issue CFP on geographies of mobility

Annals of the Association of American Geographers

2016 Special Issue on the Geographies of Mobility



The Annals of the Association of American Geographers invites abstracts of papers to be considered for a special issue on the Geographies of Mobility, which will be published in 2016. This will be the eighth of a series of annual special issues that highlight geographic research around a significant global theme.



Significant theoretical and methodological contributions are sought from a broad spectrum of scholars who address social, cultural, political, environmental, economic, theoretical, and methodological issues related to human mobility. These include geographic research in areas such as: (im)mobility and social differentiation and inequality; (im)mobility of the oppressed, subjugated and persecuted; (im)mobility and social exclusion; experience of (im)mobility; politics of (im)mobility; commuting; leisure travel; tourism; mobility by different transport modes; sustainable mobility; mobility and resilience; disasters, natural hazards, and mobility; mobility, wellbeing and health; mobility, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions; space-time modeling and GIS-based analysis of mobility; mobility research methods; and other relevant areas.



Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted by March 1, 2014, to Journals Managing Editor Miranda Lecea at mlecea@aag.org. Final papers will be due on September 1, 2015, for publication in 2016. Papers will have a target maximum length of 5,000 words, with a smaller limit if a large number of tables and/or figures are included. All submitted papers will be subject to full peer review.



All papers published in the 2016 Special Issue will later be published (by Taylor & Francis) as an edited book

Australian researchers investigate patients’ experiences of ‘Stem Cell Tourism’

Stem Cell Tourism Research Project

“High hopes, high risk? A sociological study of stem cell tourism", a project funded by the Australian Research Council and conducted by Monash University researchers, seeks to capture the experiences of those who have travelled or thought about travelling overseas to receive stem cell treatments. Stem cells and the promise that they hold for new treatments have captured the public’s attention. However at the moment there are very few medical conditions where stem cell treatments are routinely offered in Australia. However clinics and companies overseas are promoting stem cell treatments for many conditions including multiple sclerosis.

If you have travelled abroad for stem cell treatment, as a patient or a carer or if you have considered travelling abroad but perhaps decided against it, the researchers would like to capture your story via an interview. Interviews will involve answering a series of questions over the phone and will usually take 30 to 40 minutes. Insights from this study will help in producing information for patients and their families who are contemplating stem cell treatments.

For further information and contact details please visit: http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/stem-cell-tourism-research-project/

New project: Elder Care Across Borders

Here's some information on my new study, Elder Care Across Borders (ECAB). More information is available at http://eldercareacrossborders.blogspot.nl/

Researcher (PI):

Meghann Ormond, Cultural Geography Chair Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Email: meghann.ormond [at] wur.nl

Study abstract: 

With more people living longer than ever before, ageing populations’ health and social care needs are increasingly placing a strain on individual and collective resources and capacities. To date, much elder care research has focused on the distribution of health and social care responsibility among individuals, families, communities, voluntary organisations, and public- and private-sector bodies within countries. Yet, as the growing recruitment of foreign health, residential and domestic care workers in many rapidly-ageing countries attests, the management of elder care needs extends already well beyond national borders.

This study examines another emerging yet under-explored facet of this increasingly transnational approach to redistributing elder care: older people remaining in, or relocating to, international retirement destinations as they grow more physically vulnerable. Rather than fully ‘outsourcing’ the fulfilment of older people’s everyday and medical care needs abroad, support is generated and sustained through dynamic cross-border configurations of formal (i.e., state, private and voluntary) and informal (i.e., family and community) care provision. This project therefore contributes novel longitudinal and in-depth perspective into 1) how home and destination countries’ diverse economic, social and political configurations are used to support seniors’ health and quality of life as they age and 2) how practices and policies enable and/or disable cooperation between formal and informal care providers across borders.

To accomplish this, I use a comparative case study approach to explore the health and social care experiences of growing numbers of elderly British settled in Portugal and Singaporeans in Malaysia; their informal care-givers; and the civil society, governmental and commercial entities concerned with them across both home and destination countries. Project output includes the fostering of cross-border networks in Europe and Asia, the co-development of informational tool-kits, student training on the issue and five academic journal articles.

New article: 'En route: Transport and Embodiment in International Medical Travel Journeys Between Indonesia and Malaysia'

Ormond, M. (2013) 'En route: Transport and Embodiment in International Medical Travel Journeys Between Indonesia and Malaysia', Mobilities. DOI:10.1080/17450101.2013.857812

My new article just published in Mobilities focuses on what happens in the space and time spent travelling between medical travellers' home countries and their medical destinations. Free access to this article is available for the first 50 users at http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/teK9an8Gbxguw7HCiqrH/full 

Abstract:
International medical travel is increasingly major business. Using Indonesian patient-consumers’ transport experiences in the pursuit of private medical care in Malaysia, this study explores how transport operators and infrastructure are responding and adjusting to the embodied specificities of the growing market’s access and travel needs. In offering faster and more frequent linkages, they have both expanded the physical and geo-political scope and increased the immediacy of care provision. This underscores the value of examining how the mobile spaces of transport common to international medical travel actively intersect with, blur and re-articulate diverse understandings of ill-health and impairment, care and subjectivity.

‘Medical Tourism Resiliency’ - a new research project led by the University of Malaya

‘Medical Tourism Resiliency’ is a study led by the Medical Tourism Research Group, Services Research and Innovation Centre, Faculty of Business and Accountancy, University of Malaya, Malaysia. The overall project, which runs from October 2013 to 2015, has four components: Medical tourism, Islamic medical tourism, Medical tourism communication and Accessible tourism.

Research group: 

• Ghazali Musa (PI); 
• Medical tourism: Che Ruhana Isa, Kanagi Kanapathy, Mohd Zulkhairi Mustapha, Jacob John C. Chandy, Sedigheh Moghavammi, Wong Kee Mun and Thinaranjeney Thirumoorthi; 
• Islamic medical tourism - Suhaiza Hanim Dato Mohd Zailani,  Suhana Mohezar and Mohd Kahalili; 
• Medical tourism communication - Sheena Kaur a/p Jaswant Singh, Zuraidah Mohd Don, Surinderpal Kaur, Cecilia Cheong Yin Mei, Emily Lau Kui Ling, Ana Tominc and Wang Nan;  
• Accessible tourism: Azni Zarina Taha; 
• Meghann Ormond serves as International Research Advisor to the project's four sub-projects.

A website for the project is currently in the process of being set up. For further information, contact Prof Ghazali Musa (ghazalimz [at] um.edu.my). 

Talk on Singaporean perspectives on retirement migration to Johor, Malaysia - 1 Nov. 2013 - University of Malaya

I'll be giving an impromptu seminar tomorrow (Friday, 1 November) at the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Malaya's Faculty of Medicine from 10:30-12:00 on my developing research on retirement villages and residential care facilities in Johor, Malaysia. Many thanks to Prof Chan Chee Khoon for inviting me! 

Malaysia: Researchers and Stakeholders’ Seminar on Current Issues in Medical Tourism

The University of Malaya's Services Research and Innovation Centre will be hosting a Researchers and Stakeholders’ Seminar on Current Issues in Medical Tourism in Kuala Lumpur on 31 October. I'll be presenting an overview of current research on medical tourism in Southeast Asia at this seminar. And I'm looking forward to meeting up with and working together with colleagues at UM on their new medical tourism project!

Here's the programme:

• Welcome - Prof Ghazali Musa, Director of ServRI, University of Malaya, Malaysia
• Medical tourism: A state of the art review - Dr Meghann Ormond, Wageningen University, The Netherlands
• Factors influencing sustainable performance in the medical tourism industry: A cross-national investigation in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand - Dr Kanagi Kanapathy and Dr Mohamad Zulkahiri, University of Malaya, Malaysia
• Travel motivations of Indonesian medical tourists to Malaysia and Singapore: An understanding from push and pull factors - Dr Elaine Chew Yin Teng, Monash University, Malaysia
• The discursive and visual representations of medical tourism in Malaysia - Dr Sheena Kaur A/P Jaswant Singh, University of Malaya, Malaysia
• An integrated framework for brand image, healthcare service quality, patient trust, perceived value, patient satisfaction and patient behavioural intention: Evidence from medical tourism of Malaysia - Mr Cham Tat Huei, University Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia
• Prospects, influential factors and outcomes of Islamic medical tourism industry: Healthcare service providers' perspectives - Prof Suhaiza Hamin Dato' Mohamad Zailani, University of Malaya, Malaysia
• Marketing promotion strategy of medical tourism in Malaysia - Ms. Izza Harith, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
• Tourism and the disabled community - Dr Azni Zarina Taha, University of Malaya, Malaysia
• Travel behaviour among health tourists in Kuala Lumpur: How satisfied are medical tourists in Malaysia? A study on private hospitals in Kuala Lumpur - Ms. Thinaranjeney Thirumoorthi, University of Malaya, Malaysia
• Service quality, patient satisfaction and behavioural intention for medical tourism industry in Malaysia - Dr Eugene Yeoh
• Medical tourism - Potential and challenges in Malaysia - Mr Wong Kee Mun, University of Malaya, Malaysia

Doctors of the World UK weighs in: The truth about “health tourism” to the UK

Source: http://doctorsoftheworld.org.uk/blog/entry/the-truth-about-health-tourism

It seems that hardly a week goes by without reports appearing in the press on how so-called “health tourism” is rampant in the UK. In response, the UK Government is now consulting on proposals to remove access to NHS services for visitors and migrants, while seeking to ensure ineligible patients are charged systematically for the care they receive.

But what is “health tourism” exactly and should we be concerned? The answers are nowhere near as alarming as the panic-mongers suggest…

What is health tourism?

‘Health tourism’ is the idea that people from other countries come to the UK for free NHS care and leave shortly after receiving it. But there's absolutely no evidence it's happening on a significant scale. At the clinic we run in East London, we’ve interviewed migrant patients for the past seven years and found only 1.6% left their country for health reasons. Most migrated to the UK find work or education or escape persecution. 

It’s also important to remember that medical tourism doesn’t just go one way. A January 2013 study in the British Medical Journal found that there are in fact more UK residents who travel abroad for medical treatment than there are international patients who travel to the UK to access treatment (in the NHS and privately). 

But isn’t health tourism costing the UK billions?

Not at all. Estimates vary, but NHS figures suggest the amount lost providing care for foreign nationals in 2012/2013 was £12 million, just 0.01% of the total £108.9 billion NHS budget for the same period. This should also be seen in the context of the £18 billion overseas visitors spend in the UK each year and £3 billion they pay in taxes. Additionally, migrants to the UK contribute £16.3 billion to the UK economy (1.02% of GDP), according to the OECD. And don't forget that all migrants, working or not, contribute to the health service by paying VAT.

Okay, but isn’t the NHS over-generous compared to other European countries?

No. The UK is far from unique in offering healthcare to undocumented migrants with many countries in Europe offering comparable or better care. In France and Belgium, for example, migrants have free access to essential primary and secondary healthcare with medical providers getting reimbursed for treatment. In Portugal, undocumented migrants have full access to healthcare once they have stayed over 90 days. 

That’s all well and good, but what harm is there in charging migrants for the NHS?

Frustratingly, the NHS proposed changes would be costly to put in place and would endanger people’s health needlessly.

Early detection of illness by GPs is the cheapest way of minimizing costs as well as ensuring health conditions can be managed and maintained. If not treated early, patients have a higher chance of presenting at A&E, which costs the NHS three times as much as GP visits. The current system in which visiting a GP is free for anyone who is ‘ordinarily resident’ regardless of their status or ability to pay makes the most sense, in terms of both economics and individual and community well-being.

Why should we provide healthcare regardless of immigration status or ability to pay?

Offering care regardless of immigration status or ability to pay is part of the NHS constitution. As Aneurin Bevan, the Minister for Health when the NHS was introduced, wrote in 1952: 

One of the consequences of the universality of the British Health Service is the free treatment of foreign visitors. This has given rise to a great deal of criticism, most of it ill-informed and some of it deliberately mischievous … However, there are a number of more potent reasons why it would be unwise as well as mean to withhold the free service from the visitor to Britain. How do we distinguish a visitor from anybody else? Are British citizens to carry means of identification everywhere to prove that they are not visitors?

Healthcare professionals should not have to act as immigration officials and should be allowed to focus on delivering medical care. 

Even if health tourism is not happening on a large scale, doesn’t that open the door for the system to be exploited by some people?

There are already mechanisms in place to deal with individuals who exploit the system. For instance, if debts are run up and the person has left the country, the UKBA will not let them re-enter the UK without paying up.

In short, the claims being made about health tourism are often wildly exaggerated. Correcting these misconceptions is now incredibly important in order to prevent the UK Government’s proposal to introduce costly changes to the NHS that will mean thousands of people will not receive care they’re entitled to. These changes will be bad for individuals’ health, public health, and simply make bad economic sense.

Make your voice heard: tell the Department of Health your opinion in their online survey.

Twitter: #health4all