The Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA — The UCLA-based research team led by Professor Victor Agadjanian has been awarded the prestigious ORCA Acceleration Grant (OAG) by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Creative Activities (ORCA) for research titled “Male Labor Migration and Rural Women’s Health: Understanding Connections and Optimizing Actions”, with a focus on the Republic of Armenia.
Since its independence in 1991, Armenia has experienced considerable permanent emigration. However, Armenia also has a long tradition of large-scale temporary and seasonal labor migration, wherein workers, especially from rural areas, travel abroad, mainly to the Russian Federation, for employment while leaving their families behind. Most labor migrants are men, who account for up to four-fifths of the current and returned migrant population.
This project will bring together the sociological, biomedical, and public health perspectives and corresponding expertise of the team members to study the relationship between men’s international labor migration with “left-behind” women’s health in rural Armenia.
Agadjanian is a professor in the Department of Sociology and the International Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses primarily on the demographic aspects of social change in sub-Saharan Africa, the former Soviet Union, and Latin America. He views demographic phenomena as an organic part of complex and rapid social transformation in those societies.
The other members of this interdisciplinary research team are Dr. Shant Shekherdimian, associate professor and the interim chief of the Division of Pediatric Surgery of the Department of Surgery at UCLA and current advisor to the Minister of Health of Armenia, and Dr. Alina Dorian, associate dean for Public Health Practice at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and adjunct associate professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences.
The project will include a representative household-based survey and interviews with health care providers. These data will be jointly analyzed to examine how men’s migration, through its gendered effects on family resources, opportunities, and relationships, may facilitate or obstruct women’s demand for, access to, and utilization of two types of health services: reproductive healthcare and breast/gynecological cancer prevention and detection. The findings will provide guidance for effective policy interventions by governmental institutions and non-governmental agencies. They will also greatly strengthen the team’s ability to obtain extramural funding for larger-scale investigative and applied projects focused on improving the health and well-being of rural women and other vulnerable populations.
The ORCA Acceleration Grants (OAG) are intended to support research and creative activities that expand our knowledge in meaningful ways and drive positive change in society.