Runtime: 2018-2021
Client: various healthcare organizations for elderly care
Project description
The REGIOZ project is an action-oriented research project focusing on how elderly care is increasingly organized in geographical regions, urging for more collaborative care practices between primary care, nursing homes, home care, mental care, municipalities, health insurers, and policy agencies. The project, that comprises multiple single projects and initiative, all conducted in close collaboration (‘co-production’) with field level parties (i.e. nursing homes, health insurance agencies, Ministry of Health, local agencies, Waardigheid & Trots), happens against the backdrop of a shrinking healthcare workforce (especially at the countryside) and a greying population facing more and multiple disorders. We study, and act with, regional experiments in which alternative types of care are developed, reconfiguring traditional boundaries between healthcare organizations and practitioners. Conducting qualitative ‘regional’ pilot studies, we examine both the consequences for everyday healthcare provision and the impact on (and influence of) existing institutional arrangements (i.e. financial schemes, accountability infrastructures) of these initiatives.
Using theories from Medical Sociology, Anthropology, Science & Technology Studies, Human Geography and Public Administration, we conceptualize regions both as a place for care and a carescape; as care not only involves the elderly, but also professional development, informal caregivers, policy makers and the geographical areas themselves. Looking from different theoretical and empirical angles, we seek to come to a rich and productive understanding of regions as places of care.
Activities
In 2020, we will expand our research focus, conducting research in rural areas in Norway and Bulgaria.
In the spring of 2020, we have published the first results of the study [link naar het rapport], in Dutch. Furthermore, we have published on the projects in Medisch Contact and Zorgvisie (both in Dutch).
In August 2020, we will organize a panel on care, place and regions at the 4S conference in Prague (virtual): Where is Care? (Un)Settling Place, Materialities and Imaginaries in the Making of Healthcare, together with Andrea Ford, University of Chicago, and Martyn Pickersgill, University of Edinburgh.
Team
Iris Wallenburg, Jitse Schuurmans, Dara Ivanova, Nienke van Pijkeren, Oemar van der Woerd, Hanna Stalenhoef, Leonoor Graler, Wilma van der Scheer, Marianne van Bochove, Roland Bal