Dr. Travel Agent: Exploring the serious shortcomings of medical tourism.

Teeth cleaning, knee surgery, plastic surgery, organ transplants, and a miscellany of other medical services can all be acquired overseas...for a price!  Medical tourism is the practice of crossing borders in order to receive medical care.  In some ways, it is an ancient practice.  But, in an era of deep public investments in health care services in rich and poor countries alike there comes risks, opportunities, and consequences for all involved.  In this episode of GDP we are joined by Dr. Valorie Crooks whose research explores the complex dynamics of medical tourism.  Recorded on top of Burnaby Mountain at Simon Fraser University, she chats with Dr. Bob about why medical tourism may not be a healthy choice. Dr. Valorie Crooks completed her PhD at McMaster University in 2005.  The following year she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at York University.  Since 2006 she has been a faculty member in the Department of Geography  at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Crooks currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Health Service Geographies and she also holds a Scholar Award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. Dr. Crooks is a health geographer by training.  As such, she is interested in the spatial and place-based dimensions of health and health care.  She broadly conceives of herself as a health services researcher, and have an ongoing interest in understanding lived experiences of accessing needed/wanted health and social care services.  Because of this experiential focus, she primarily engages in non-hypothesis-testing qualitative research, or lead qualitative components of mixed-methods studies.  Her research interests are best characterized by four areas of inquiry: (1) disability and chronic illness; (2) primary health care; (3) palliative health and social care; and (4) medical tourism.  She has received funding from numerous agencies, and especially the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, to pursue collaborative projects in each of these areas. Follow Dr. Bob on Twitter:  @ProfessorHuish