North de Pencier receives Dr Benjamin Goldberg Research Award for HoM project
This summer, North de Pencier, Meds 2019 will be analyzing archival documents and hospital records to track health changes within various Indigenous communities in Northwestern Ontario during the period from 1969 to 1996. Her project, ""Environmentally-induced retardation": Intellectual Testing and Overdiagnosis of Developmental Disabilities at the Sioux Lookout Zone Hospital, 1969-1996," aims to help explain historical and contemporary health conditions in a region suffering disproportionate levels of many communicable and non-communicable disease and developmental delays.
According to de Pencier, “my hypothesis is that intellectual tests that were designed for Anglophone, Southern Canadians were applied to indigenous children with very little linguistic or cultural translation, and therefore there was a significant overdiagnosis of intellectual disability in the Sioux Lookout Zone during the period being studied. My argument will delve into the uncertainty of the clinicians who administered the intellectual tests, as they critique each other methods, critique the intellectual tests being used, and theorize why so many children do so poorly on the tests in the indigenous communities.”
This research is supported by the Annual Dr Benjamin Goldberg Research Grant, awarded to students conducting research of relevance to the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities, thereby helping to improve the lives of individuals with this condition.
Congratulations North on receiving this award and best of luck with your research project!
