Doctoral Dissertation Research: Factors Driving Changes within Global Healthcare Markets

University Of Hawaii, Honolulu

Investigators

Abstract

Though by no means a new phenomenon, medical travel - the seeking of healthcare services abroad - continues to grow rapidly as individuals look to the global market to meet their healthcare needs. While anthropologists have pointed to the intensely varied nature of medical travel experiences, there remains much to be understood about the different kinds of healthcare concerns which drive medical travel, as well as how individuals and families navigate financial, bureaucratic, and other systems to obtain care abroad. This project, which trains a graduate student in methods of empirically-grounded, scientific research, seeks to understand how individuals' and families' desires for particular healthcare treatments (e.g. cancer screenings and treatments) may influence their temporary or long-term migrations to the U.S. and elsewhere, as well as how their shifting healthcare concerns may evidence changing ideas regarding illness, health, and expectations of healthcare systems. Understanding these factors is imperative to informing programs and policies that respond to the shifting nature of contemporary, global healthcare seeking, particularly as it impacts migrations to and the use of healthcare services in the U.S. and elsewhere. Zakea Boeger, under the supervision of Dr. Jan Brunson of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, will examine the factors impacting travel to service healthcare needs. This yearlong research project will be conducted in Nuku'alofa, Kingdom of Tonga, where the researcher has conducted previous work. As the Tongan government supports a publically funded healthcare system, Nuku'alofa is an apt site for identifying key healthcare concerns that drive individuals to seek healthcare abroad, and to draw on often-limited resources to do so. Scientific research of medical travel has tended to focus on populations with more extensive resources to finance travel for medical purposes, so this site offers an opportunity to test a number of prevailing assumptions about the drivers of medical travel. The researcher will engage in extensive interviews with individuals and families who have engaged in and/or plan to engage in medical travel, so as to gain an understanding of the motivations for and means by which individuals are able to access health care abroad. Interviews will provide insight into the possible relationship between Tongans' primary medical travel destinations (e.g. the U.S.) and contemporary, ongoing Tongan and Pacific migration to the U.S. and elsewhere. Interviews will also consider how medical travel experiences may be intertwined with shifting socio-cultural notions of health, appropriate health care, and resultant expectations of healthcare systems in Tonga and abroad. Project findings will help illuminate broader health concerns that drive global, medical travel, as well as how this travel may impact healthcare systems in the U.S. and abroad.