Professor Emeritus · Sociological Author · Community Activist
About Juanne Nancarrow Clarke
A career spent examining the medicalization of everyday life, how media portrays health across audiences, and the medical errors that cost lives.
Juanne Nancarrow Clarke is a professor emeritus from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Wilfrid Laurier University. She earned her PhD from the University of Waterloo, and taught at Laurier for many years.
As a medical sociologist, Dr. Clarke has spent her career exploring the social forces influencing the health of individuals and the public health system overall. The main focus of her research has been on the medicalization and biomedicalization of everyday life. She has been especially interested in the media portrayal of mental and physical health issues over time, across place, and as directed towards audience groups differing by social category.
Her current research and writing utilizes an applied research lens, critically examining topics such as gender and medicalization, pharmaceuticalization, medical error, the wellbeing of refugees, and experiences of refugee sponsorship groups in Canada.
Juanne currently lives in Toronto, Canada where she spends the majority of her time researching, writing, and spending time with her two daughters and grandchildren. Juanne is active in the community in many different ways and venues.
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
- Health and medical sociology
- (Bio)medicalization
- Gender and health
- Age and health
- Social policy
- Media analysis
AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS
- Laurier Alumni Faculty Mentoring Award
- Laurier's 2013-2014 University Research Professor
- Thérèse Casgrain Fellowship (SSHRC)
- Grace M. Anderson Fellowship for Women
- Best Paper Prize: Commission on Health Communication
FEATURED PROJECT
"You are downstream on the bank of a beautiful river... you jump in and pull people, one after another, out of the water.
This is what happens when we focus on problems downstream."
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Health, Illness, and Medicine in Canada
9th Edition · Oxford University Press · 2026
Now in its ninth edition, this widely-used text has shaped how a generation of Canadian students understand health, illness, and medicine through a sociological lens.
When Medicine Goes Awry
University Of Toronto Press · 2022
A sociological examination of medical error — including the case of Brian Sinclair, an Indigenous man who died after a 34-hour ER wait for an easily treatable condition — tracing how medicalization and the social determinants of health shape who gets hurt by the system meant to help them.
After the Welcome
University of Regina Press · May 2027
Based on interviews with 100 Syrian refugees, After the Welcome follows what comes after resettlement — the barriers, the discrimination, and the long work of turning a welcome into belonging.
RELATED ARTICLE · 2024
"The Bordering Practices of Canadian Newspapers (2011–2022): 'Canada is the Hope of the World'"
Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, Volume 24, Issue 3
Finding Strength
Juanne spent her career as a medical sociologist studying how people live through illness, including a book on how women with breast cancer handle diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. Then her 17-year-old daughter, Lauren, was diagnosed with leukemia, and the subject of her research became her own family's life.
Finding Strength follows the two of them from the first symptoms through two years of treatment to a clean bill of health. Each chapter pairs their story with what medical and sociological research has found, and Lauren adds her own footnotes, poetry, and an epilogue. The book ends with a full bibliography and a list of childhood cancer resources. Families facing a similar diagnosis will find practical help in it, and health care workers will find a close, informed account of what patients and families need from them.
Finding Strength is still available on Amazon.
GET YOUR COPY→
