About
CHRISTINA PAPADIMITRIOU, Ph.D.
Hello, I am Christina Papadimitriou, an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Health Sciences and Sociology at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, USA. I also hold a Senior Scholar position at George Washington University, School of Medicine & Health Sciences, at the Center for Healthcare Innovation and Policy Research, in Washington, DC, USA.
Research Perspective
I conduct field-based human subject research using interdisciplinary training in sociology and health services research. All of my work is inter-professional and I collaborate with a diverse group of health professionals and scholars from a range of disciplines, such as occupational and physical therapy, psychology, economics, philosophy, nursing and medicine.
My scholarship aims to explicate all types of assumptions that we take for granted about what it means to live with disability in society. This requires re-thinking disability-related medical rehabilitation. It is challenging and thought provoking. The lenses my associates and I use are inspired by phenomenology, social justice and equity, and disability studies.
My scholarship aims to explicate all types of assumptions that we take for granted about what it means to live with disability in society. This requires re-thinking disability-related medical rehabilitation. It is challenging and thought provoking. The lenses my associates and I use are inspired by phenomenology, social justice and equity, and disability studies.
The Work
Among my most cited work, and the work that has drawn the most international attention, include these efforts to conceptually expand our understandings of disability rehabilitation and challenge taken for granted assumptions. The concepts of en-wheeling, temporal and existential disruption, combine philosophy and social science perspectives to suggest that disability is part of human diversity, and that our professional and disciplinary blinders prevent us from treating persons with disabilities as fully human and result in our missing important aspects of their post-injury recovery and re-habituation (habituating having to do with who we are as opposed to habilitating which has to do only with what we can do).
My work focuses on the acceptance and experience of disability as another type of human diversity. A diversity that has long been unrecognized or underutilized. There are a number of possibilities for living in a world that fully embraces disability as a positive form of human potential. When this happens we see how the equitable access to health care is fostered. Seeing the world this way requires re-thinking our assumptions of worthiness, competency and independence. My work focuses on exposing these assumptions.
Current Funded Research
I am currently the co-Principal Investigator of a 5-year National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR)-funded grant. This entails developing, implementing, and evaluating a year-long peer health navigator intervention in Chicago, IL. The work, part of a center grant, focuses on the development of a peer health navigation intervention to help Medicaid beneficiaries with physical disabilities overcome barriers to preventative and primary care. This project is part of a center grant on health and function, which is housed at the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab (formerly The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago), Northwestern University, and University of Illinois, Chicago campus. Dr. Susan Magasi (at UIC) is the Principal Investigator. We are currently completing the third year of the project and are preparing to launch an effectiveness study using a clinical trial design.
