Who are we?

The Social Science & Health Innovation for Tuberculosis (SSHIFTB) Centre is a virtual global community of practice connecting critical and applied scholars, advocates and learners from a range of disciplines, institutions and settings to increase our collective visibility, collaboration and impact.

The mission of the centre is to connect social science TB scholars, trainees, and advocates from a range of disciplines, institutions, and settings, coalesce efforts and elevate the social science gaze on TB. The hope is that SSHIFTB will stimulate new thinking around practices and interventions to address the social and sociomedical aspects of TB, as well as reduce duplication of efforts. By leveraging the virtual space, we actively seek to include ideas and research from around the world.

SSHIFTB is supported by funds from the Dahdaleh Institute of Global Health Research (DIGHR) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada.

Vision

Tuberculosis is the world’s leading infectious disease killer. Despite investments in research and programming, major declines in incidence or mitigation of its social impacts remain to be seen. Particular countries and populations are immensely, and inequitably, affected. While TB has long been recognized as a social disease, responses to TB seldom adhere to this framing.

SSHIFTB seeks to change this rhetoric. We connect people who arrive at the problem of TB from a range of disciplines, institutions, and settings around the world to inspire new (and nuanced) thought and social innovation, and we invite persons with lived experience to help lead the dialogue. We recognize the geographies and disciplines which may separate our team, with a view to interrogate and dispense with those boundaries and distinctions, rather harnessing them as a force for transdisciplinary transformative action.

In this virtual space, TB is situated as a social disease, with innumerable drivers, constructions, implications, and consequences. As with the process of much social science inquiry, the mission and scope of the Centre will evolve through the lens, voice, and situation of those who come to be involved, complexities and divergences therein, and the ongoings of our exigent worlds. In its early stages, the Centre will serve as a repository of people, projects, news, resources, and opportunities to inspire ideas and facilitate partnerships. We will gradually host original commentaries, events, and dedicate funds to stimulate scholarly or advocacy outputs that complement the efforts of others working in TB.