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Visiting Tutor for "Global Perspectives" San Patten grew up in the Alberta foothills and is thrilled to spend some time in the Rockies again, after living in Atlantic Canada for four years. San lives in Halifax, where she works as a health research and evaluation consultant. She completed a Masters degree in Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary (1999), and then worked for AIDS Calgary Awareness Association and for the Alberta Community Council on HIV. In 2005, San started her own consulting practice, specializing in HIV/AIDS policy development, program evaluation, facilitation, capacity building and community-based research. San has provided technical assistance and has consulted internationally in many of these areas. Her international work experience includes projects in India, Mexico, Zambia, Kenya, Moldova, Serbia, Cambodia, Pakistan, Uganda, Ethiopia and South Africa. San's research focus on HIV/AIDS-related issues over the last 13 years has given her a strong working knowledge of pressing social issues facing vulnerable people both in Canada and developing countries (e.g., poverty, homelessness, addictions, gender inequity, the sex trade, homophobia), and overarching social contexts of marginalization, social stigma and inequalities. San applies a rights-based approach and a social determinants of health lens to analyze all human development issues. The social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. They are the entire range of individual and collective factors and conditions - and their interactions - that have been shown to be correlated with health status. Using a rights-based approach focuses on the dignity and inherent worth of all individuals, and in the context of essential health and social services, frames access to those services as a human right and the obligation of governments rather than as charity or privilege. San looks forward to the opportunity to encourage Quest University's students to apply these analyt frameworks to the global issues most important to them. Apart from her consulting practice, San is also an adjunct professor in Sociology at Mount Allison University (specializing in social policy and non-profit leadership) and a co-investigator of the Centre for HIV Prevention Social Research based at the University of Toronto. San balances work with soccer, hiking, cross-country skiing, kayaking, watching films, and knitting. |
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