CASCA is honoured to welcome Dr. Naomi Adelson as CASCA Fellow for 2024!

Dr. Adelson is a professor of medical anthropology and, since 2018, the associate vice president, research and innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University. This honour recognizes Dr. Adelson’s research excellence and the rich and longstanding contributions she has made to our association and to anthropology in Canada.

The impacts of Dr. Adelson’s scholarship and professional endeavours are impressive and many. She has made significant theoretical and applied contributions to medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry in Canada and internationally. Her primary research focus has been on a critical examination of health/well-being, focusing in particular on the political, cultural, and social landscapes of Indigenous health in Canada. Her research career has been built upon a foundation of three priorities: a fundamental commitment to understanding Indigenous/First Nations health and health equity; the advancement of the field of medical anthropology; and the practice of strongly engaged, collaborative and ethically sound qualitative research.

Dr. Adelson is grateful for her three decade-long collaborative research relationship with the Whapmagoostui Iiyiyu’ch of Iiyiyu Istchee (Nunavik, QC). More recently, in consultation and collaboration with the community’s leadership and with the James Bay Cree Board of Health and Social Services, she has digitised and is in the process of transferring to the community full ownership, control, and management of her original research interviews, translations, and related documents and images.

Dr. Adelson has played a vitally important role in CASCA, of which she has been a member for most of her academic career, beginning in 1993. Thanks to her efforts and interventions, CASCA’s email listserv was hosted by York University for two decades, and our website became the voice of and public and informational portal for our association and its members. Her contributions also extend to our annual conferences, for which she has previously served as the Book Exhibit and Advertising Coordinator in 1993-94 and Advertising Coordinator in 1995-96. Most recently, she has served as a member of the Local Organizing Committee for the 2023 CASCA/AAA meetings which were held in Toronto.

CASCA members are warmly invited to join the executive in celebrating Dr. Adelson’s election as a CASCA Fellow!