Dr. Iffath Unissa Syed
University of Toronto, Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation (IHPME), Post Doctorate Completed in 2021
Hello and welcome!
My name is Dr. Iffath Unissa Syed. I am a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Administration (HPA) at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). Penn State has over 24 campuses; I am located at the Shenango campus where I teach in-person, but I also teach remotely across other Penn State campuses within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
On this website you will find information related to my research, and my research interests, among other things.
My current research includes the following interdisciplinary areas: Healthy Aging, Behavioral Sciences, Sociology of Health and Illness, Medical Sociology, Medical Humanities, Public Health, Work-Related Injuries, Illness, and Disabilities, Occupational Health Inequities, Occupational Ergonomics; Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders among non-manual and manual occupations; Cumulative Trauma Disorders, Working Conditions and Health, Workplace Violence, Occupational Cancers, Chronic Illnesses in the Workplace, Obesity stigma, Labor Policies, Labor Legislation, and Health and Safety Law. My research interests focus on the following groups: newcomers, immigrants, visible minorities, racialized persons, and women.
Various lenses are used in these endeavors including: Critical Political Economy, Critical Race/Anti-Racism Theory, Feminism, Social Justice, Human Rights, and Social Determinants of Health which help to examine disparities in occupational health of workers in a comparative context.
My credentials or degrees completed are as follows: PhD at York University’s Graduate Program in Health, Master of Public Health (MPH) Degree at the University of Toronto, and an Honors Bachelor of Science (HBSc) Degree in the Human Biology Specialist Program at the University of Toronto. I was the first Alumna to complete three specializations for my MPH from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in: Occupational Health, the Collaborative Program in Environment and Health, and Master’s Global Health Concentration.
Most of my research, such as peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, or book chapters, is accessible under "RESEARCH" on this website, but if you are unable to download it or see a link, please submit your contact information to me on the "CONTACT" portion of this website and I will be happy to reach out to you and share my research articles.
Thank you for visiting!
My name is Dr. Iffath Unissa Syed. I am a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Administration (HPA) at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). Penn State has over 24 campuses; I am located at the Shenango campus where I teach in-person, but I also teach remotely across other Penn State campuses within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
On this website you will find information related to my research, and my research interests, among other things.
My current research includes the following interdisciplinary areas: Healthy Aging, Behavioral Sciences, Sociology of Health and Illness, Medical Sociology, Medical Humanities, Public Health, Work-Related Injuries, Illness, and Disabilities, Occupational Health Inequities, Occupational Ergonomics; Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders among non-manual and manual occupations; Cumulative Trauma Disorders, Working Conditions and Health, Workplace Violence, Occupational Cancers, Chronic Illnesses in the Workplace, Obesity stigma, Labor Policies, Labor Legislation, and Health and Safety Law. My research interests focus on the following groups: newcomers, immigrants, visible minorities, racialized persons, and women.
Various lenses are used in these endeavors including: Critical Political Economy, Critical Race/Anti-Racism Theory, Feminism, Social Justice, Human Rights, and Social Determinants of Health which help to examine disparities in occupational health of workers in a comparative context.
My credentials or degrees completed are as follows: PhD at York University’s Graduate Program in Health, Master of Public Health (MPH) Degree at the University of Toronto, and an Honors Bachelor of Science (HBSc) Degree in the Human Biology Specialist Program at the University of Toronto. I was the first Alumna to complete three specializations for my MPH from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in: Occupational Health, the Collaborative Program in Environment and Health, and Master’s Global Health Concentration.
Most of my research, such as peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, or book chapters, is accessible under "RESEARCH" on this website, but if you are unable to download it or see a link, please submit your contact information to me on the "CONTACT" portion of this website and I will be happy to reach out to you and share my research articles.
Thank you for visiting!
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Papers by Dr. Iffath Unissa Syed
and cellular pathways of illnesses commonly associated with adverse social determinants of health is urgently needed. We contend that a commitment to understanding adverse outcomes in historically marginalized communities will increase community-level confidence in public health measures. Here, we synthesize emerging literature on mast cell disease, and the role of mast cells in chronic illness, alongside emerging research on mechanisms of COVID illness and vaccines. We propose that a focus on aberrant and/or hyperactive mast cell behavior associated with chronic underlying health conditions can elucidate adverse COVID-related outcomes and contribute to the pandemic recovery.
Standards of care for mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), as well as clinical reviews, experimental research, and case reports, suggest that effective and cost-efficient remedies are available, including antihistamines, vitamin C, and quercetin, among others. Primary care physicians, specialists, and public health workers should consider new and emerging evidence from the biomedical literature in tackling COVID-19. Specialists and researchers note that MCAS is likely grossly under-diagnosed; therefore, public health agencies and policy makers should urgently attend to community-based experiences of adverse COVID outcomes. It is essential that we extract and examine experiential evidence of marginalized communities from the broader political–ideological discourse.
learn from that experience as we prepare for other infectious disease pandemics we could face this century. Furthermore, we argue that threats to global health in the 21st century extend beyond future infectious disease pandemics to include both the growing burden of
non-communicable diseases – such as diabetes – that are linked to the pandemic of childhood obesity and the health impacts of climate change. Increased concerns about future infectious disease pandemics – along with the recognition of chronic disease and climate change as
global threats to health – highlight the importance of developing a strategy to guide effective 21st-century public health practice. In this paper, we argue that the key principles of population health, largely drawn from seminal Canadian work that explicitly incorporates concepts of health inequities, complex causation and coordinated upstream intervention,
can guide the development of effective public health practice for the 21st century.
What motivates the decision to send remittances? This mixed-methods study used a single-case design and relied on interviews and a survey. The results indicate that many LTC workers provided significant financial support to transnational families, up to CAD 15,000 annually, for a variety of reasons, including support for education and healthcare costs, or as gifts during cultural festivals.
However, the inability to send remittances was also a source of distress for those who wanted to assist their families but were unable to do so. These findings raise important questions that could be directed for future research. For example, are there circumstances under which financial remittances are funded through loans or debt? What are the implications for the sustainability and impact of remittances, given the current COVID-19 pandemic and its economic effect of dampening incomes and wages, worsening migrants’ health, wellbeing, and quality of life, as well as adversely affecting recipient economies and the quality of life of global communities?
Current research advocates lifestyle factors to manage workers’ health issues, such as obesity, metabolic syndrome, and type II diabetes mellitus, among other things (World Health Organization (WHO) Obesity: preventing and managing the global epidemic, 2000; World Health Organization (WHO) Obesity and overweight, 2016), though little is known about employees’ lifestyle factors in high-stress, high turnover environments, such as in the long term care (LTC) sector.
Methods:
Drawing on a qualitative single-case study in Ontario, Canada, this paper investigates an under-researched area consisting of the health practices of health care workers from high-stress, high turnover environments. In particular, it identifies LTC worker’s mechanisms for maintaining physical, emotional, and social wellbeing.
Results:
The findings suggest that while particular mechanisms were prevalent, such as through diet and exercise, they were often conducted in group settings or tied to emotional health, suggesting important social and mental health contexts to these behaviors. Furthermore, there were financial barriers that prevented workers from participating in these activities and achieving health benefits, suggesting that structurally, social determinants of health (SDoH), such as income and income distribution, are contextually important.
Conclusions:
Accordingly, given that workplace health promotion and protection must be addressed at the individual, organizational, and structural levels, this study advocates integrated, total worker health (TWH) initiatives that consider social determinants of health approaches, recognizing the wider socio-economic impacts of workers’ health and wellbeing.
particularly female workers—is an especially important area for research. Migrant women have an increased vulnerability to occupational musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in low-paid and gendered occupations such as those in the textile, hairdressing, cleaning and garment-work industries, accompanied by mental stress due to production demands.1 One of the fastest growing communities in Canada is that of female migrants from South Asian (SA) countries, comprised of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and Nepal.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature concerning work-related musculoskeletal disorders among South Asian immigrant women in Canada. We have focused on SAs because they make up the largest visible minority group since 2006, with a population of 3.2 to 4.1 million people within Canada. This group is expected to remain the largest set of visible minorities until 2031.4 This study defines Canadian
visible minorities as persons who are non-Aboriginal, non-Caucasian or non-white in color. This includes such ethnicities as South Asian, Chinese, Black, Arab, West Asian, Filipino, Southeast Asian, Latin American, Japanese and Korean.5 As the SA population continues to expand, more SA individuals are expected to enter the
workforce and may experience occupational health disparities. If these individuals are at a high risk for MSDs, introducing appropriate interventions could minimize health problems, and reduce the burden of health and disability in this largest visible minority group. A literature review could help assess whether or not a large scale
study is necessary on this topic.
Guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s framework,6 a scoping review of peer-reviewed literature was carried out using the following databases: Medline (Ovid), CINAHL (Ebsco) and Scholars Portal. Search years ranged from 2000 to 2014. Articles were screened for relevance by topic. Following this strategy, manual search of gray
literature was employed, such as searching reference lists from scholarly papers, and textbooks on women’s occupational health. Results were limited to articles in the English language, excluded dissertations, conferences and studies involving undocumented migrants, the latter being excluded because they are not permanent
economic migrants. Including them would be outside of the scope of this study.
Thirteen sources were retrieved and analyzed for this paper. After assessing the sources for relevancy to the topic, issues and gaps in knowledge, pertaining to non-reporting of MSDs, socioeconomic class effects, high-risk occupations and cultural factors as modulators and determinants of the occupational health of immigrant women—including SA immigrant women—were identified. Although most studies of immigrant workers incorporate SA populations, they are not comprehensive in their focus on this group. There is a lack of significant literature that explicitly examines the prevalence of MSDs among SA immigrant women in Canada. This knowledge gap can be explored and filled in future studies.
and cellular pathways of illnesses commonly associated with adverse social determinants of health is urgently needed. We contend that a commitment to understanding adverse outcomes in historically marginalized communities will increase community-level confidence in public health measures. Here, we synthesize emerging literature on mast cell disease, and the role of mast cells in chronic illness, alongside emerging research on mechanisms of COVID illness and vaccines. We propose that a focus on aberrant and/or hyperactive mast cell behavior associated with chronic underlying health conditions can elucidate adverse COVID-related outcomes and contribute to the pandemic recovery.
Standards of care for mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), as well as clinical reviews, experimental research, and case reports, suggest that effective and cost-efficient remedies are available, including antihistamines, vitamin C, and quercetin, among others. Primary care physicians, specialists, and public health workers should consider new and emerging evidence from the biomedical literature in tackling COVID-19. Specialists and researchers note that MCAS is likely grossly under-diagnosed; therefore, public health agencies and policy makers should urgently attend to community-based experiences of adverse COVID outcomes. It is essential that we extract and examine experiential evidence of marginalized communities from the broader political–ideological discourse.
learn from that experience as we prepare for other infectious disease pandemics we could face this century. Furthermore, we argue that threats to global health in the 21st century extend beyond future infectious disease pandemics to include both the growing burden of
non-communicable diseases – such as diabetes – that are linked to the pandemic of childhood obesity and the health impacts of climate change. Increased concerns about future infectious disease pandemics – along with the recognition of chronic disease and climate change as
global threats to health – highlight the importance of developing a strategy to guide effective 21st-century public health practice. In this paper, we argue that the key principles of population health, largely drawn from seminal Canadian work that explicitly incorporates concepts of health inequities, complex causation and coordinated upstream intervention,
can guide the development of effective public health practice for the 21st century.
What motivates the decision to send remittances? This mixed-methods study used a single-case design and relied on interviews and a survey. The results indicate that many LTC workers provided significant financial support to transnational families, up to CAD 15,000 annually, for a variety of reasons, including support for education and healthcare costs, or as gifts during cultural festivals.
However, the inability to send remittances was also a source of distress for those who wanted to assist their families but were unable to do so. These findings raise important questions that could be directed for future research. For example, are there circumstances under which financial remittances are funded through loans or debt? What are the implications for the sustainability and impact of remittances, given the current COVID-19 pandemic and its economic effect of dampening incomes and wages, worsening migrants’ health, wellbeing, and quality of life, as well as adversely affecting recipient economies and the quality of life of global communities?
Current research advocates lifestyle factors to manage workers’ health issues, such as obesity, metabolic syndrome, and type II diabetes mellitus, among other things (World Health Organization (WHO) Obesity: preventing and managing the global epidemic, 2000; World Health Organization (WHO) Obesity and overweight, 2016), though little is known about employees’ lifestyle factors in high-stress, high turnover environments, such as in the long term care (LTC) sector.
Methods:
Drawing on a qualitative single-case study in Ontario, Canada, this paper investigates an under-researched area consisting of the health practices of health care workers from high-stress, high turnover environments. In particular, it identifies LTC worker’s mechanisms for maintaining physical, emotional, and social wellbeing.
Results:
The findings suggest that while particular mechanisms were prevalent, such as through diet and exercise, they were often conducted in group settings or tied to emotional health, suggesting important social and mental health contexts to these behaviors. Furthermore, there were financial barriers that prevented workers from participating in these activities and achieving health benefits, suggesting that structurally, social determinants of health (SDoH), such as income and income distribution, are contextually important.
Conclusions:
Accordingly, given that workplace health promotion and protection must be addressed at the individual, organizational, and structural levels, this study advocates integrated, total worker health (TWH) initiatives that consider social determinants of health approaches, recognizing the wider socio-economic impacts of workers’ health and wellbeing.
particularly female workers—is an especially important area for research. Migrant women have an increased vulnerability to occupational musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in low-paid and gendered occupations such as those in the textile, hairdressing, cleaning and garment-work industries, accompanied by mental stress due to production demands.1 One of the fastest growing communities in Canada is that of female migrants from South Asian (SA) countries, comprised of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and Nepal.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature concerning work-related musculoskeletal disorders among South Asian immigrant women in Canada. We have focused on SAs because they make up the largest visible minority group since 2006, with a population of 3.2 to 4.1 million people within Canada. This group is expected to remain the largest set of visible minorities until 2031.4 This study defines Canadian
visible minorities as persons who are non-Aboriginal, non-Caucasian or non-white in color. This includes such ethnicities as South Asian, Chinese, Black, Arab, West Asian, Filipino, Southeast Asian, Latin American, Japanese and Korean.5 As the SA population continues to expand, more SA individuals are expected to enter the
workforce and may experience occupational health disparities. If these individuals are at a high risk for MSDs, introducing appropriate interventions could minimize health problems, and reduce the burden of health and disability in this largest visible minority group. A literature review could help assess whether or not a large scale
study is necessary on this topic.
Guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s framework,6 a scoping review of peer-reviewed literature was carried out using the following databases: Medline (Ovid), CINAHL (Ebsco) and Scholars Portal. Search years ranged from 2000 to 2014. Articles were screened for relevance by topic. Following this strategy, manual search of gray
literature was employed, such as searching reference lists from scholarly papers, and textbooks on women’s occupational health. Results were limited to articles in the English language, excluded dissertations, conferences and studies involving undocumented migrants, the latter being excluded because they are not permanent
economic migrants. Including them would be outside of the scope of this study.
Thirteen sources were retrieved and analyzed for this paper. After assessing the sources for relevancy to the topic, issues and gaps in knowledge, pertaining to non-reporting of MSDs, socioeconomic class effects, high-risk occupations and cultural factors as modulators and determinants of the occupational health of immigrant women—including SA immigrant women—were identified. Although most studies of immigrant workers incorporate SA populations, they are not comprehensive in their focus on this group. There is a lack of significant literature that explicitly examines the prevalence of MSDs among SA immigrant women in Canada. This knowledge gap can be explored and filled in future studies.
A growing number of studies are using rapid ethnographies to understand workplace conditions, labour process, and care work (Baines and Cunningham 2011; Szebehely 2007). Our method involved a team-based rapid ethnography conducted in five Ontario non-profit nursing homes. We conducted thematic analysis of the following data: 143 key informant interviews (with staff / managers, paid companions, family, volunteers and students); work observation field notes; policy documents; and dining room “maps” identifying who was present, who helped whom and who did not require help.
This paper focuses on our use of the dining room maps to document the nature, extent and relationship between formal and informal care in nursing homes, specifically focusing on the division of labour and some challenges and benefits associated with informal care in institutionalized spaces. Our study contributes to the qualitative rapid ethnography literature by showing how detailed mapping of work in particular spaces can yield patterns of relations over time.