Dr. Lee’s research examines global health inequities through an analysis of structural factors and social environments that maintain systemic injustices. She seeks to develop appropriate and effective ways to promote health through action-oriented research approaches and planning of programs and interventions that expose and address structural injustice. She is passionate about applied health and social research and translating ‘research into action,’ making linkages with rigorous research, program planning and evaluation and participatory action research (PAR). In her research with children and youth, she seeks to co-develop with young people approaches to explore and address injustices and barriers that impact wellbeing and social justice.
Her doctoral project concentrated on understanding the social processes that produce sexual ill health and violence among young women who head households in Kenya. She took a unique approach, blending social epidemiological theory with social suffering and structural violence theory, to advance a relational framework to understand young women’s experience of health and violence. A qualitative, community-based action approach to explore young women’s experience, agency and their response amid extremely constraining and shifting social and care environments was applied. Dr. Lee’s Masters research (Edinburgh, 2006) employed participatory methodologies to explore the social and economic factors that produce psychosocial suffering and health inequity among child-headed households in Rwanda and to develop community-based approaches to strengthen wellbeing. The research pointed toward the need to strengthen community capacity to care and support children through building on children’s resiliency and on community resources and led to a community-based mentorship program still in effect today that was developed with the partners and the children.
