Consultancy
Consultancy
Medical Sociology Health services composition, organization, accessibility and utilization; health behaviour and health knowledge, cultural norms, lifestyle implications; cultural variations in health systems, international comparisons and socio-economic predictors; national and international health policy analysis; family-health services link in caregiving; psychoactive substance use.
Family Sociology Family behaviour and conflict resolution; analysis of micro- and macro-level predictors of family formation, structure, behaviour and norms involving communities, countries and world regions.
Public Policy Analysis of policy formulation, implementation and evaluation in the fields of health care and family.
Social Methodology Analysis and application of social research methods and instruments, survey research, quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and data analysis.
Brief Background
I am a sociologist specialized in medical sociology, family sociology, and social policy, and Adjunct Professor, Health Services and Systems Research Program, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. I am member of several Institutional Review Boards and member of these international peer-reviewed journals: International Advisory Board of the British Journal of Sociology; Editorial Advisory Board of Health Sociology Review; Editorial Advisory Board of Sociology of Health and Illness; Editorial Board of Marriage & Family Review. My editorial work includes: Subject Editor of Epidemiology and Public Health, Elsevier Reference Module in Biomedical Sciences (2014-2019); Co-editor, 1st edition (2014) and 2nd edition (in progress), Willey Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behavior and Society; Editor, Routledge Handbook of Families in Asia (Routledge, 2015); Co-Editor of the International Encyclopedia of Public Health, 1st edition (2008); and Editor-in-Chief of the 2nd Edition (Elsevier, 2017) and 3rd Edition (in progress, to be published by Elsevier in 2024).
I was awarded a Fulbright-Hays scholarship from 1969 to 1971. During my long career (1977-2009) as faculty member of the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore (formerly University of Singapore), I spent sabbaticals as Research Associate and Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California Berkeley (1986-87); the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Department of Sociology at Harvard University (1993-94); the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University (1997); the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies, Stanford University (1997); the National Centre for Development Studies, Australian National University (2002); and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University (2006).
Among my other professional activities, I held the positions of Chairperson of the International Sociological Association (ISA) Research Committee on the Sociology of Health (RC15) from 1990 to 1994; ISA Vice-President for Research, 1994-1998; Chairperson, ISA Research Council, 1994-1998; and Associate Editor of International Sociology (1998-2004).
My research and publications are on the fields of sociology of health, family sociology, social policy, social class and sociology of professions. You will find in this site the complete and current list of my publications on three main research areas as shown by the tabs “Health Sociology”, “Family Sociology” and “General Sociology”. At the top of each section, you find the Overview or index of subthemes. I give the link to the original publication source (journal/publisher) and, whenever possible, if copyright regulations permit it, I provide the PDF version of the publication.