Since the mid-1990s, qualitative social science research has steadily gained visibility, acceptability, and legitimacy in health policy and clinical research. Many health services, clinical implementation, and policy projects now rely on qualitative data to flesh out quantitative findings in mixed-methods projects. Increasingly, qualitative research stands on its own to reveal the mechanisms of health disparities and determinants, to develop interventions or trace processes of organizational change, and to elevate the voices of people who are impacted by policy.
Housed at IHPS, the Medical Cultures Lab (MCL) includes faculty, post-docs, and research staff with expertise in qualitative approaches. Trained in the social sciences, MCL faculty work in a range of clinical fields and health policy areas. The Lab values work that is methodologically rigorous and transparent. It supports investigators (at all career stages) who align research with justice. MCL pursues this work through research collaboration, sharing research resources, mentoring, and a newly-launched consultation service.
MCL maintains wide-ranging research relationships. Members’ home UCSF departments include Geriatrics, Humanities & Social Sciences, Hospital Medicine, and the Institute for Health & Aging. They have additional appointments in the Cancer Center, Neurology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Surgery. MCL core members also work at other universities including San Francisco State, UC Davis, and the University of Arizona. Their substantive work touches on maternal health, bioethics, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, palliative care, and health communication, among other topics. MCL research typically involves a focus on underserved or oppressed patients and communities.
The recently-developed MCL consultation services offers project-level support. Assistance is available in classic qualitative project design, data collection, data management (including how to code data), data analysis, using software programs for qualitative analysis, and assisting with qualitative manuscripts. All of these services are tailored to what an individual researcher needs for their project. The Lab also can provide support for preparing research coordinators and project assistants who work with principal investigators doing qualitative research – interview training, fieldwork training, data coding, and data analysis. Administrative items such as writing an IRB protocol with qualitative components, proposal writing, and budgeting for qualitative research are also among the Lab’s services. If you are interested in the MCL consulting services, please email Brandi Ginn (brandi.ginn@ucsf.edu).
MCL currently has several research grants that support the creation and dissemination of other tools for qualitative researchers. This work includes creating a library of resources for qualitative researchers and providing small- and large-group didactics to early-stage investigators.
MCL members are active mentors. Junior faculty support medical students and post-docs. The lab’s more senior faculty members mentor early-career faculty, including in developing and carrying out NIH K and other career development projects. MCL faculty provide research staff with opportunities for personal and intellectual growth through project work as well as through MCL-based training and activities such as Lab journal club. Mentoring activities are one of many ways MCL members work toward furthering research justice in academic medicine.
