Increasing access to palliative care for patients with advanced cancer of African and Latin American descent: a patient-oriented community-based study protocol.

Background: Cancer disparities are a major public health concern in Canada, affecting racialized communities of Latin American and African descent, among others. This is evident in lower screening rates, lower access to curative, and palliative-intent treatments, higher rates of late cancer diagnoses and lower survival rates than the general Canadian population. We will develop an Access to Palliative Care Strategy informed by health equity and patient-oriented research principles to accelerate care improvements for patients with advanced cancer of African and Latin American descent.

'Sand in the works?' Infrastructural affordances and life with dementia in the community.

The social health of people living with dementia is a more recent addition to the dementia research agenda; to date conceptions of the problem and solutions have relied on underdeveloped theorisations of sociality and social inclusion. In this article, using a material-semiotic approach to care practices and infrastructure, we use an ethnographic case study of one family of a person living with dementia using a day programme and home care supports over a period of 9 months, to examine how infrastructural arrangements provide particular affordances for social relatedness for people living with dementia in the community. The aim of the analysis is to consider how the infrastructural affordances created by the organisation of care may create spatially bounded lives and limit the subject positions available for people living with dementia and their families.

Problematising assumptions about 'centredness' in patient and family centred care research in acute care settings.

Over the last two decades significant efforts have been made to implement patient and family 'centred' care as both a practical and moral imperative for adult acute care delivery. Although many resources have been developed and adopted by institutions, research suggests persistent and diverse barriers to implementing and achieving patient and family 'centred' care in adult acute care practice settings. These issues in implementation suggest re-examining the nature of 'centredness' in care may be useful.