Dr. Vishala Parmasad
Diabetogenic Diets and Culture in a Diasporic Indian Community: Depathologizing Lifestyles in Debe, Trinidad
December 7, 2023
View Dr. Parmasad’s presentation on YouTube
For this lecture, I draw upon doctoral research conducted into Type 2 diabetes management practices within an Indian diasporic community in the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean to interrogate the tensions between the pathologizing of Indian Trinidadian ethnic practices as part of the biosocial identity of “diabetogenic” in healthcare setting. In this guest lecture, I explore small-scale acts of living, growing, and consuming engaged in by persons with Type 2 diabetes as resistant and resilient practices that invoked and materially constituted Indian Trinidadian histories and identity practices as inherently anti-diabetic. Through this analysis, I consider a theory of scale in which agency is articulated through social and cultural practices and can be explicated alongside the overwhelming forces of state and capital.
About the Presenter
Vishala Parmasad is a scientist in the Division of Infectious Disease, Department of Medicine, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an affiliate of the UW-Madison Robert & Jean Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, the Center for South Asia, and the Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program.
Dr. Parmasad’s research employs qualitative and mixed methods to examine how to improve health service outcomes by integrating the perspectives of partners such as patients, providers, and administrators in targeting specfic workflow improvements.
Dr. Parmasad‘s work is interdisciplinary and draws upon theories and methods from medicine, human factors engineering, implementation science and anthropology. Her research has spanned antibiotic stewardship improvements, prevention of healthcare associated diseases, COVID-19, behavioral approaches to weight management, type 2 diabetes management, and blood donation practices.”