CQUniversity's Institute for Health and Social Science Research (IHSSR) is this week holding two research seminars in Rockhampton about the inequalities in health.

Chris Platania-Phung, Research Fellow for the Institute in Melbourne has already presented on ‘Social-Scapes of the Walk' and he will address ‘A Double Stigma: Combined Physical-Mental Illness and Inequalities in Health Care' on Thursday at 1pm (building 33 G.14) .

The presentations are also being teleconferenced to the Gladstone, Mackay and Bundaberg campuses.

'Social Scapes of the Walk' was focused on the physical activity of walking. This talk gave a tour of how the everyday practice of walking has captured the sociological imagination and in particular diverse perspectives on the meanings, pleasures and risks of walking. Implications for walking promotion initiatives were also discussed.

The second presentation - A Double Stigma: combined physical-mental illness & inequalities in health care - will discuss concerns that there is a poorer quality of health care for people classified as having both mental and physical illness, and that this is due to the stigma of mental illness. Chris will look at the research challenges in this area and the prospect of double pronged stigma reduction approaches to improved quality of health care for all.

Chris has served university posts in various disciplines to gain a comprehensive understanding of inequalities in health and their bearing on community approaches to wellbeing.

Previous to CQUniversity he was a research assistant on the ARC project  'Never again? The nature and effectiveness of regulatory responses to terrorism, the Esso Longford explosion and the collapse of HIH Insurance' (led by Assoc. Profs. Fiona Haines & Adam Sutton) at the School of Political and Social Sciences, University of Melbourne.