Dr. Terra Manca is a sociologist and Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in regulation, social governance, and inequities in health. Her research about vaccination in pregnancy focuses on evidentiary gaps from pharmaceutical regulation and social governance around health risk decision-making. As part of large interdisciplinary research teams, she researches intersecting inequities in personal responsibility, access, and acceptance of recommended vaccines. She also leads research into how additional caregiving and parenting responsibilities from pandemic health policies were unevenly distributed across intersecting social locations.

She teaches Masters courses in Health Disciplines and previously taught Sociology courses about research design, qualitative research methods, introductory sociology, and the family.

Dr. Manca is an assistant professor at Athabasca University in the Faculty of Health Disciplines and an Adjunct (Faculty of Graduate Studies) in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University. She earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Alberta.

AFFILIATIONS

Faculty of Health Disciplines (Athabasca University)
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology (Dalhousie University)
Canadian Immunization Research Network

 

Publications

A list of publications are available here.

Publicly Accessible Talks

Manca, T. 2021. “Deferring Risk: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Vaccination during Pregnancy.” Canadian Society for the Sociology of Health. Canada-wide (60-minute virtual webinar, recording: https://www.cssh-scss.ca/webinars)

Ongoing and Recent Research

 

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  • This multi-component study aims to increase understandings of vaccine hesitancy and acceptance in Canada. The component Dr. Manca co-leads involves exploring attitudes, values, and perceptions of risks around COVID-19 vaccines among parents.

    Role: Research Associate, qualitative lead

    Co-lead: Shannon MacDonald

    Principal Investigator: Eve Dubé

  • This study examines how pregnant persons and their healthcare providers interpret information about vaccine use during pregnancy. It targets how ideas about gender and emotion influence understandings of information about vaccines.


    Role: Principal Investigator
    Co-supervisors: Drs. Janice Graham and Karina Top

    Dr. Manca received funding from the IWK Health Centre and Canadian Immunization Research Network to complete this study as a postdoctoral fellow.

    Preliminary findings were presented to the Canadian Society for the Sociology of Health. https://www.cssh-scss.ca/webinars

  • Although there is no fee to access COVID-19 vaccines in Canada, there are barriers to accessing vaccination locations and information, especially for underserved populations (e.g., visible minorities, Indigenous Peoples, migrants, and linguistic minorities). This study used mixed methods, including surveys and qualitative interviews to investigate barriers to uptake and motivations for vaccination.

    Role: Co-Investigator (qualitative component)
    Principle Investigator: Dr. Shannon MacDonald

  • Pregnant women and their healthcare providers routinely make decisions about vaccines based on contradictory information. For example, the labels for influenza and COVID-19 vaccines that the National Advisory Committee recommends in every pregnancy state that there is no evidence about use in pregnant or breastfeeding women. In Canada, these labels are written by pharmaceutical manufacturers and regulated by Health Canada. This was an interdisciplinary and multiple-method study at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology that investigated concerns about the content in product labels and developed vaccine product labelling statements.


    Role: Postdoctoral Fellow

    Supervisors: Karina Top and Janice Graham