China Hand
Biographic Data
| ID | 250987 |
|---|---|
| NAME | China Hand |
| GIVEN NAMES | China |
| FAMILY NAME | Hand |
| SIGNATURE | HAND C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Western University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7661-8083 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 31 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Deepening Understanding of Oasis, a Norc-Based Program
Background As the Canadian population ages, supporting older adults’ desire to age in their homes and communities is vital. Oasis is an older adult-driven program implemented within naturally occurring retirement communities (NORCs) that fosters social connections to support aging in place. While housing partners provide space for such programs, their perspectives are underexplored. Objective This study examined housing partners’ experiences (lan…
Building Connections among University Students and Older Adult through Co-occupation in Intergenerational Living
Intergenerational programs can support social connectedness, and an important element is engaging in activities together, known as ‘co-occupation’. To address gaps in the literature, we explored how older adults and university students living together in a retirement home enacted co-occupations, the factors that shaped the co-occupations, and how the co-occupations affected intergenerational relationship-building and connections. We conducted a f…
Oasis Senior Supportive Living
Introduction: According to the World Health Organization, in 2019, there were one billion people aged 60 years and older. This number is projected to rise to 2.1 billion by 2050. However, older adults living in the community often experience loneliness and other health consequences. Our existing service model, which is heavily focused on disease and lacks the involvement of service users, is not adequately prepared to address the diverse social a…
Community Support Providers in the Social Networks of Older Adults Living in Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (Norcs)
Introduction: The world population is aging, and most people prefer to stay in their homes for as long as possible. There is a growing number of naturally occurring retirement communities (NORCs)—unplanned neighborhoods or apartment buildings with a high proportion of older adults—in many countries such as Australia, Canada, and the USA. To experience healthy aging, older adults living in NORCs must be surrounded by a quality network encompassing…
Oasis Aging in Place
Background: Over the next 20 years, Canada older adult population (aged 65 years old) is expected to grow by 68%. Older adults face isolation, loneliness, inadequate nutrition, and lack of physical activity which continue to be serious and growing threats to aging well in place. Addressing these challenges requires multifaceted approach involving service providers, community organizations, and people. To meet this need, an innovative model known …
Constructing ‘Otherness’ in the neighbourhood
Drawing from 108 qualitative interviews with 38 participants from an ethnographic study investigating older adults’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion in two increasingly socio-economically diverse neighbourhoods, this paper employs a queer approach to identify how older adults construct and narrate socio-cultural change in the neighbourhood, as well as complicate simplistic binary understandings of older adults invoked in ageing-in-place lit…
A Critical Ethnographic Approach for Understanding How Environmental Factors Shape Experiences of Community Mobility for Older Adults Aging With and Into Vision Loss
The number of older adults diagnosed with vision loss in Canada, and globally, is growing. Older adults with age-related vision loss (ARVL), including macular degeneration, glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy, experience a reduced capacity to engage with their communities because their opportunities to access and engage with their environments are greatly reduced. This can lead to feelings of abandonment, enhanced fear, and social isolation, which…
Enacting the Principles of Participatory Action Research (PAR)
Introduction: While existing reflections on participatory action research (PAR) emphasize the benefits experienced by participants in such studies, they often fail to critically interrogate the PAR process. This gap underscores the significance of process-oriented papers that illuminate the dynamics, supports, and hurdles of PAR, crucial for aligning scholarly endeavors with its fundamental principles of equitable participation, social transforma…
Research Practices to Foster Accessibility for, and the Inclusivity of, Older Adults With Vision Loss
Introduction: It is important that the embodied experience of visual impairment is understood in research, and critical participatory action research (CPAR) is one such research methodology that encourages the direct participation of individuals with disabilities in the design, development, and dissemination of research. Methods: This reflexive paper unpacked how our research collective carried out accessible and inclusive CPAR with older adults …
Aging Muslim immigrants transitioning from Muslim majority countries to Muslim minority countries
Immigration can challenge aging people’s health, social inclusion, and continued engagement in meaningful occupations, causing loss of and/or change in social status, relationships, and roles; all of which can be intimately tied to place and identity. Such losses may lead to depression, isolation, and can negatively affect quality of life. This scoping review aimed to better understand how aging Muslim immigrants re-establish and enact occupation…
Invisible, unrecognised and undervalued
Over the past 40 years, positive ageing discourses that speak to an expectation of continued productivity have gained prominence within research and policy. Such discourses have been critiqued as placing disproportionate value on the extension of older adults' working lives, while obscuring other valuable forms of work performed by older adults. Despite the emergence of theoretical conversations about the expansion of conceptions of work, few stu…
Neighbourhood-based participatory action research with older adults
Participatory action research (PAR) is an effective means of collaborating with older adults to support community change. Limited PAR literature exists in which older adults catalyse social change within neighbourhoods, particularly using virtual methods. In this paper, we discuss a virtual PAR process with older adults that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the results of inquiry into our application of PAR principles. We conducted PAR …
Special Issue on Place
The Role of Leisure Engagement in Older Adults Adapting to New Residences and Experiencing Other Transitions during a Pandemic
Older adults experience a transition when moving, and moving during a pandemic creates additional challenges. Leisure activities are linked to providing life satisfaction and maintaining identity among older adults experiencing life transitions such as moving to assisted living, widowhood, and caregiving responsibilities. Despite this link, there is a paucity of literature describing leisure's role in adapting to new homes. A modified ethnographi…
Leisure’s relation to older adults adapting to new homes
As the global population ages, older adults may move to new homes, experiencing changes in their social and physical environments. Leisure has been linked to adjusting to these changes by promoting maintenance of identity and socialization. The purpose of this scoping review is to synthesize literature regarding leisure’s relation to older adults’ adaptation to new homes. Findings suggest leisure is linked to adaptation to new homes by providing …
Examining Social Relationships among Older Muslim Immigrants Living in Canada
Social connectedness and engagement are particularly important among groups who are at risk of experiencing social isolation, such as immigrant older adults. The objective of our study was to understand the social relationships of aging Muslim Lebanese immigrants living in Canada by exploring their lives in their ethnic and wider communities. This study used a life course perspective and adopted a constructivist narrative inquiry to understand th…
Contested occupation in place
Congregate living among older adults aims to enhance important aspects of well-being, such as sense of community and social engagement. Such settings, however, involve a complexity of social and power relations, and inclusion and exclusion along lines of occupation and place can occur. In this paper we develop a concept of contested occupation in place and use this concept to explore experiences of inclusion and exclusion in a seniors-only apartm…
Engagement in the social context of the neighbourhood
Previous research has focused on the social environments of older adults with age-related vision loss (ARVL) and how support received from close social networks, such as family and friends, can support engagement in meaningful occupations, which refer to everyday activities that hold meaning for individuals. Little research attention, however, has been paid to how the social context of neighbourhoods may support or hinder engagement in community …
Late-life immigrants’ place integration through occupation
Immigrating and aging in a foreign environment, or aging out-of-place, is part of the late-life experience for a growing number of older adults. Examining how everyday occupations are part of late-life immigrants’ relationships to multiple places, cultures, and identities can expand upon scholarship addressing immigration in occupational science. This phenomenological study explored how Sinhalese late-life immigrants to Canada connect and engage …
Applying the go-along method to enhance understandings of occupation in context
Engaging in human occupation is complex, often involving commonplace practices that cannot be readily articulated. Accordingly, a growing number of occupational science and occupational therapy scholars have called for expanded qualitative methodologies and methods to support enhanced understandings of occupation in context. In this paper we respond to these calls by discussing how the go-along method—a hybrid of participant observation and inter…
Enacting agency
Within research on ageing in neighbourhoods, older adults are often positioned as impacted by neighbourhood features; their impact on neighbourhoods is less often considered. Drawing on a study exploring how person and place transact to shape older adults’ social connectedness, inclusion and engagement in neighbourhoods, this paper explores how older adults take action in efforts to create neighbourhoods that meet individual and collective needs …
Governing the ageing body
Positive ageing discourses have proliferated in Western nations, forming key aspects of structured mandates for how to think about, and act towards, ageing bodies. As interpretive resources, positive ageing discourses shape how adults growing older think about themselves, their bodies and the bodies of others in relation to the process of ageing and the imperative to ‘age well’. Informed by governmentality, this paper considers how positive agein…
Applying case study methodology to occupational science research
Case study methodology offers a creative and flexible way to gain a comprehensive understanding of human complexities in context, using various means to collect data. This paper is divided into two parts. Part one provides a brief overview of what case study methodology is; and part two presents an integrated review (Whittemore & Knafl, 2005) on how case study has been used for the study of occupation. Findings indicate that while case study meth…
Working Towards the Promise of Participatory Action Research
Within research addressing issues of social justice, there is a growing uptake of participatory action research (PAR) approaches that are ideally committed to equitable participation of community members in all phases of the research process in order to collaboratively enact social transformation. However, the utilization of such approaches has not always matched the ideal, with inconsistencies in how participation and action are incorporated. 'P…
Associations Among Neighborhood Characteristics, Mobility Limitation, and Social Participation in Late Life
Findings suggest that improving older adults' ability to participate in community life and age in place requires strategies that consider how neighborhood and individual characteristics interact and how these characteristics may differentially affect types of participation
Working Towards the Promise of Participatory Action Research
Within research addressing issues of social justice, there is a growing uptake of participatory action research (PAR) approaches that are ideally committed to equitable participation of community members in all phases of the research process in order to collaboratively enact social transformation. However, the utilization of such approaches has not always matched the ideal, with inconsistencies in how participation and action are incorporated. 'P…
Governing the ageing body
Positive ageing discourses have proliferated in Western nations, forming key aspects of structured mandates for how to think about, and act towards, ageing bodies. As interpretive resources, positive ageing discourses shape how adults growing older think about themselves, their bodies and the bodies of others in relation to the process of ageing and the imperative to ‘age well’. Informed by governmentality, this paper considers how positive agein…
Associations Among Neighborhood Characteristics, Mobility Limitation, and Social Participation in Late Life
Findings suggest that improving older adults' ability to participate in community life and age in place requires strategies that consider how neighborhood and individual characteristics interact and how these characteristics may differentially affect types of participation
Neighbourhood influences on participation in activities among older adults with chronic health conditions
Enacting agency
Within research on ageing in neighbourhoods, older adults are often positioned as impacted by neighbourhood features; their impact on neighbourhoods is less often considered. Drawing on a study exploring how person and place transact to shape older adults’ social connectedness, inclusion and engagement in neighbourhoods, this paper explores how older adults take action in efforts to create neighbourhoods that meet individual and collective needs …
Invisible, unrecognised and undervalued
Over the past 40 years, positive ageing discourses that speak to an expectation of continued productivity have gained prominence within research and policy. Such discourses have been critiqued as placing disproportionate value on the extension of older adults' working lives, while obscuring other valuable forms of work performed by older adults. Despite the emergence of theoretical conversations about the expansion of conceptions of work, few stu…
Neighbourhood-based participatory action research with older adults
Participatory action research (PAR) is an effective means of collaborating with older adults to support community change. Limited PAR literature exists in which older adults catalyse social change within neighbourhoods, particularly using virtual methods. In this paper, we discuss a virtual PAR process with older adults that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the results of inquiry into our application of PAR principles. We conducted PAR …
Late-life immigrants’ place integration through occupation
Immigrating and aging in a foreign environment, or aging out-of-place, is part of the late-life experience for a growing number of older adults. Examining how everyday occupations are part of late-life immigrants’ relationships to multiple places, cultures, and identities can expand upon scholarship addressing immigration in occupational science. This phenomenological study explored how Sinhalese late-life immigrants to Canada connect and engage …
Applying case study methodology to occupational science research
Case study methodology offers a creative and flexible way to gain a comprehensive understanding of human complexities in context, using various means to collect data. This paper is divided into two parts. Part one provides a brief overview of what case study methodology is; and part two presents an integrated review (Whittemore & Knafl, 2005) on how case study has been used for the study of occupation. Findings indicate that while case study meth…
Constructing ‘Otherness’ in the neighbourhood
Drawing from 108 qualitative interviews with 38 participants from an ethnographic study investigating older adults’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion in two increasingly socio-economically diverse neighbourhoods, this paper employs a queer approach to identify how older adults construct and narrate socio-cultural change in the neighbourhood, as well as complicate simplistic binary understandings of older adults invoked in ageing-in-place lit…
Enacting the Principles of Participatory Action Research (PAR)
Introduction: While existing reflections on participatory action research (PAR) emphasize the benefits experienced by participants in such studies, they often fail to critically interrogate the PAR process. This gap underscores the significance of process-oriented papers that illuminate the dynamics, supports, and hurdles of PAR, crucial for aligning scholarly endeavors with its fundamental principles of equitable participation, social transforma…
Research Practices to Foster Accessibility for, and the Inclusivity of, Older Adults With Vision Loss
Introduction: It is important that the embodied experience of visual impairment is understood in research, and critical participatory action research (CPAR) is one such research methodology that encourages the direct participation of individuals with disabilities in the design, development, and dissemination of research. Methods: This reflexive paper unpacked how our research collective carried out accessible and inclusive CPAR with older adults …
The Role of Leisure Engagement in Older Adults Adapting to New Residences and Experiencing Other Transitions during a Pandemic
Older adults experience a transition when moving, and moving during a pandemic creates additional challenges. Leisure activities are linked to providing life satisfaction and maintaining identity among older adults experiencing life transitions such as moving to assisted living, widowhood, and caregiving responsibilities. Despite this link, there is a paucity of literature describing leisure's role in adapting to new homes. A modified ethnographi…
Examining Social Relationships among Older Muslim Immigrants Living in Canada
Social connectedness and engagement are particularly important among groups who are at risk of experiencing social isolation, such as immigrant older adults. The objective of our study was to understand the social relationships of aging Muslim Lebanese immigrants living in Canada by exploring their lives in their ethnic and wider communities. This study used a life course perspective and adopted a constructivist narrative inquiry to understand th…
Contested occupation in place
Congregate living among older adults aims to enhance important aspects of well-being, such as sense of community and social engagement. Such settings, however, involve a complexity of social and power relations, and inclusion and exclusion along lines of occupation and place can occur. In this paper we develop a concept of contested occupation in place and use this concept to explore experiences of inclusion and exclusion in a seniors-only apartm…
Applying the go-along method to enhance understandings of occupation in context
Engaging in human occupation is complex, often involving commonplace practices that cannot be readily articulated. Accordingly, a growing number of occupational science and occupational therapy scholars have called for expanded qualitative methodologies and methods to support enhanced understandings of occupation in context. In this paper we respond to these calls by discussing how the go-along method—a hybrid of participant observation and inter…
The Coming Change of Course in Afghanistan
As the US public is dimly aware, things are not going very well in Afghanistan.The United Nation situation map for Afghanistan issued September 3 (the most recent available) paints a grim picture: The large swaths shaded with the purple diagonal lines are places where things are getting worse. This includes the entire area surrounding Kandahar on the Pakistan border in the south, as well as areas on the Pakistan-Tajikstan border in the Northeast …
Stigmata
On June 21, the Chinese government was able to claim a victory of sorts, at least in terms of the semiotics of state power, by orchestrating an incident-free, albeit truncated Olympic torch relay through Lhasa.Almost contemporaneously, a 1300-kilometer, ninety day march through India to the Tibetan border organized by the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement (hereafter TPUM) fizzled to a miserable conclusion as its last few dozen members were arres…
Twilight of the NPT? The US, Syria, Iran, North Korea and the Control of Nuclear Weapons
The United States has pushed the international non-proliferation regime to the breaking point.Anxiety over US attempts to define and direct the international non-proliferation regime may be provoking some dangerous decisions in the Middle East
US Sanctions Send Iran Into the Arms of Asia
From a Western-centric point of view, the United States and its allies are pushing Iran into a corner
Neighbourhood influences on participation in activities among older adults with chronic health conditions
The effect of the environment on participation of children and youth with disabilities
OBJECTIVE: The study’s purpose was to identify and synthesize research evidence regarding the effect of the environment on community participation of children with disabilities. METHODS: A scoping review of peer-reviewed studies published from 1990 to 2011 was performed. Two independent reviewers selected studies based on a systematic procedure. Inclusion criteria for studies were: participants with a disability, aged 5–21 years, whose environmen…
Associations Among Neighborhood Characteristics, Mobility Limitation, and Social Participation in Late Life
Findings suggest that improving older adults' ability to participate in community life and age in place requires strategies that consider how neighborhood and individual characteristics interact and how these characteristics may differentially affect types of participation
Applying case study methodology to occupational science research
Case study methodology offers a creative and flexible way to gain a comprehensive understanding of human complexities in context, using various means to collect data. This paper is divided into two parts. Part one provides a brief overview of what case study methodology is; and part two presents an integrated review (Whittemore & Knafl, 2005) on how case study has been used for the study of occupation. Findings indicate that while case study meth…
Working Towards the Promise of Participatory Action Research
Within research addressing issues of social justice, there is a growing uptake of participatory action research (PAR) approaches that are ideally committed to equitable participation of community members in all phases of the research process in order to collaboratively enact social transformation. However, the utilization of such approaches has not always matched the ideal, with inconsistencies in how participation and action are incorporated. 'P…
Governing the ageing body
Positive ageing discourses have proliferated in Western nations, forming key aspects of structured mandates for how to think about, and act towards, ageing bodies. As interpretive resources, positive ageing discourses shape how adults growing older think about themselves, their bodies and the bodies of others in relation to the process of ageing and the imperative to ‘age well’. Informed by governmentality, this paper considers how positive agein…
Enacting agency
Within research on ageing in neighbourhoods, older adults are often positioned as impacted by neighbourhood features; their impact on neighbourhoods is less often considered. Drawing on a study exploring how person and place transact to shape older adults’ social connectedness, inclusion and engagement in neighbourhoods, this paper explores how older adults take action in efforts to create neighbourhoods that meet individual and collective needs …
Engagement in the social context of the neighbourhood
Previous research has focused on the social environments of older adults with age-related vision loss (ARVL) and how support received from close social networks, such as family and friends, can support engagement in meaningful occupations, which refer to everyday activities that hold meaning for individuals. Little research attention, however, has been paid to how the social context of neighbourhoods may support or hinder engagement in community …
Late-life immigrants’ place integration through occupation
Immigrating and aging in a foreign environment, or aging out-of-place, is part of the late-life experience for a growing number of older adults. Examining how everyday occupations are part of late-life immigrants’ relationships to multiple places, cultures, and identities can expand upon scholarship addressing immigration in occupational science. This phenomenological study explored how Sinhalese late-life immigrants to Canada connect and engage …
Applying the go-along method to enhance understandings of occupation in context
Engaging in human occupation is complex, often involving commonplace practices that cannot be readily articulated. Accordingly, a growing number of occupational science and occupational therapy scholars have called for expanded qualitative methodologies and methods to support enhanced understandings of occupation in context. In this paper we respond to these calls by discussing how the go-along method—a hybrid of participant observation and inter…
Leisure’s relation to older adults adapting to new homes
As the global population ages, older adults may move to new homes, experiencing changes in their social and physical environments. Leisure has been linked to adjusting to these changes by promoting maintenance of identity and socialization. The purpose of this scoping review is to synthesize literature regarding leisure’s relation to older adults’ adaptation to new homes. Findings suggest leisure is linked to adaptation to new homes by providing …
Examining Social Relationships among Older Muslim Immigrants Living in Canada
Social connectedness and engagement are particularly important among groups who are at risk of experiencing social isolation, such as immigrant older adults. The objective of our study was to understand the social relationships of aging Muslim Lebanese immigrants living in Canada by exploring their lives in their ethnic and wider communities. This study used a life course perspective and adopted a constructivist narrative inquiry to understand th…
Contested occupation in place
Congregate living among older adults aims to enhance important aspects of well-being, such as sense of community and social engagement. Such settings, however, involve a complexity of social and power relations, and inclusion and exclusion along lines of occupation and place can occur. In this paper we develop a concept of contested occupation in place and use this concept to explore experiences of inclusion and exclusion in a seniors-only apartm…
Special Issue on Place
The Role of Leisure Engagement in Older Adults Adapting to New Residences and Experiencing Other Transitions during a Pandemic
Older adults experience a transition when moving, and moving during a pandemic creates additional challenges. Leisure activities are linked to providing life satisfaction and maintaining identity among older adults experiencing life transitions such as moving to assisted living, widowhood, and caregiving responsibilities. Despite this link, there is a paucity of literature describing leisure's role in adapting to new homes. A modified ethnographi…
Aging Muslim immigrants transitioning from Muslim majority countries to Muslim minority countries
Immigration can challenge aging people’s health, social inclusion, and continued engagement in meaningful occupations, causing loss of and/or change in social status, relationships, and roles; all of which can be intimately tied to place and identity. Such losses may lead to depression, isolation, and can negatively affect quality of life. This scoping review aimed to better understand how aging Muslim immigrants re-establish and enact occupation…
Invisible, unrecognised and undervalued
Over the past 40 years, positive ageing discourses that speak to an expectation of continued productivity have gained prominence within research and policy. Such discourses have been critiqued as placing disproportionate value on the extension of older adults' working lives, while obscuring other valuable forms of work performed by older adults. Despite the emergence of theoretical conversations about the expansion of conceptions of work, few stu…
Neighbourhood-based participatory action research with older adults
Participatory action research (PAR) is an effective means of collaborating with older adults to support community change. Limited PAR literature exists in which older adults catalyse social change within neighbourhoods, particularly using virtual methods. In this paper, we discuss a virtual PAR process with older adults that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the results of inquiry into our application of PAR principles. We conducted PAR …
Oasis Aging in Place
Background: Over the next 20 years, Canada older adult population (aged 65 years old) is expected to grow by 68%. Older adults face isolation, loneliness, inadequate nutrition, and lack of physical activity which continue to be serious and growing threats to aging well in place. Addressing these challenges requires multifaceted approach involving service providers, community organizations, and people. To meet this need, an innovative model known …
Constructing ‘Otherness’ in the neighbourhood
Drawing from 108 qualitative interviews with 38 participants from an ethnographic study investigating older adults’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion in two increasingly socio-economically diverse neighbourhoods, this paper employs a queer approach to identify how older adults construct and narrate socio-cultural change in the neighbourhood, as well as complicate simplistic binary understandings of older adults invoked in ageing-in-place lit…
A Critical Ethnographic Approach for Understanding How Environmental Factors Shape Experiences of Community Mobility for Older Adults Aging With and Into Vision Loss
The number of older adults diagnosed with vision loss in Canada, and globally, is growing. Older adults with age-related vision loss (ARVL), including macular degeneration, glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy, experience a reduced capacity to engage with their communities because their opportunities to access and engage with their environments are greatly reduced. This can lead to feelings of abandonment, enhanced fear, and social isolation, which…
Psychology (22 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (11 works) · Migration, Aging, and Tourism Studies (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Ethnography (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Occupational Therapy Practice and Research (8 works)