Dr. Amy Speier, Eckerd College, will undertake research on the growing transnational practice of medical tourism, in which patients seek lower cost health care by traveling abroad. This phenomenon is widely viewed as illustrating how globalization transforms the relationship between people and territory; it also may be an outcome of the growth of health care consumerism. One of the new medical tourism destinations is Eastern Europe, which has an older tradition of medical tourism focused on the allegedly healing powers of spas. Speier will pursue her research in the Czech Republic, where she will compare the new and the older forms of medical tourism to illuminate which factors are most salient for recent developments.
The focus of Spier's research will be patient-tourists from North America who travel to the Czech Republic for in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment. She will determine their motivations for leaving North America for medical care, why they have chosen the Czech Republic in particular, and what their experiences are. She will employ a mix of ethnographic methods including, participant observation; surveys; focus groups; and interviews with patient-tourists, the providers, and the medical tourism companies that facilitate travel between different parts of the world. This new data will then be compared to earlier research she has carried out on the Czech spa industry.
This research is important because strategies to reduce health care are a major national concern. At the individual level, medical tourism is one such strategy, with larger implications that are not yet well understood. This research also will contribute to understanding transnational reproductive medicine in the context of global economics and networks, as well as North American responses to infertility.
