Team Members

Krystyna Adams

I graduated from the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University (SFU) with a Bachelor of Arts in May, 2010. I worked as a Research Assistant with the Medical Tourism Research Group for over a year before starting my Master's in Public Health with a focus in Global Health, again at SFU. I am now a Master's trainee with the group, working under the supervision of Dr. Jeremy Snyder. My research is focused on ethical concerns in medical tourism, specifically the communication of risks of medical tourism through the greation of an ethical buying guideline for medical tourists.

Victoria Casey

I am a M.A. student in the Department of Geography and am supervised by Dr. Valorie Crooks. I hold a Bachelor of Arts and Science degree in Geography and Psychology from the University of Lethbridge (Alberta, Canada). I am interested in understanding the lived experience of disability, the role and structure of medical tourism support networks and the experience of medical tourists and their families. I hope to base my Master's work on the latter two topics while continuing my research on the first through being involved in other studies.

Valorie Crooks

Since 2006 I have been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University. I am a health geographer. As such, I am interested in the spatial and place-based dimensions of health and health care. I broadly conceive of myself as a health services researcher, and have an ongoing interest in understanding lived experiences of accessing needed/wanted health and social care services. Because of this experiential focus, I primarily engage in non-hypothesis-testing qualitative research, or lead qualitative components of mixed-method studies.

My research to date is best characterized by four areas:

1. disability and chronic illness;
2. primary health care;
3. palliative health and social care; and
4. medical tourism.

I have received funding from numerous agencies, and especially the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, to pursue collaborative projects in each of these areas.

Rory Johnston

I am currently a student in the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University working on my Master's degree in the field of health geography. I am interested in researching the impacts of international trade in health services on health systems and policy, especially in regard to the influence these impacts may have on health equity. My Master's research is looking at the role of family doctors in the decision making of Canadian medical tourists and is being supervised by Dr. Valorie Crooks.

Paul Kingsbury

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University. I received a PhD in Geography and a Graduate Certificate in Social Theory from the University of Kentucky. Specializing in social and cultural geography, my research draws on the theories of Jacques Lacan and Friedrich Nietzsche to examine multiculturalism, consumption, tourism, power, and aesthetics.

Jeremy Snyder

I am an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. I received my PhD in Philosophy from Georgetown University. I am a member of an interdisciplinary health sciences faculty that includes members from the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences. I am interested in developing interdisciplinary research projects that apply ethical theories to the social determinants of health and global health inequities in partnership with researchers from outside of my own field. My research interests focus on our ethical obligations toward vulnerable populations, especially across international boundaries. I am currently engaged in research projects on medical tourism, health worker migration, pharmaceutical testing on adolescents, equity in health impact assessments, and exploitation in pharmaceutical development and low wage labour. My courses focus on ethical issues in public health, particularly at the intersection between public health, global poverty, and resource inequality.