Gabrielle Schust, BA
Graduate Research AssistantCenter for Health Equity Research |
EDUCATION
BA | University of Mississippi | International Studies, Spanish
BIOGRAPHY
Gabrielle Schust is a first-year Master of Public Health Student in the Global Health concentration at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. She received her B.A. in International Studies and Spanish from the Croft Institute for International Studies at the University of Mississippi in May of 2020, where she did her senior thesis on the comparative role of nuns as providers of healthcare and social services across time and place. Her research interests include US health law and policy, … Read more
Gabrielle Schust is a first-year Master of Public Health Student in the Global Health concentration at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. She received her B.A. in International Studies and Spanish from the Croft Institute for International Studies at the University of Mississippi in May of 2020, where she did her senior thesis on the comparative role of nuns as providers of healthcare and social services across time and place. Her research interests include US health law and policy, sexual and reproductive rights and justice, and healthcare inequities for refugee and recent immigrant populations in the US.
CONTACTS
(573) 777-0495gschust@email.unc.edu |
HEALTH EQUITY FOCUS
Global Health Health Care Economics and Organizations Public Policy Vulnerable PopulationsKEY PROJECTS
- Who Will Do the Good Works?: The Troubling Case of Secularization and the Failure of the Welfare State in England and Perú | This study examines the contribution and impacts of the social service works done by nuns in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, and in Perú within the last five years. Specifically, it investigates the relationship between nuns as providers of social services and other providers such as the government. Drawing on existing literature on theories of secularization, and a close examination of the historical evolution of the British and Peruvian welfare state apparatuses, this study contextualizes the social service work of nuns in contemporaneous social, economic, and political circumstances. It finds that the population of nuns is on a steep decline, and that the contrasting government welfare histories of the UK and Perú have led to drastically different levels of welfare state development. Through analysis of original oral history interviews with nuns who work/ed in the UK in the 1950s/60s and Perú today, and analysis of supplementary statistics on government social spending in both contexts, this study hypothesizes that as the population of nuns dies out in Perú, the government will be ill prepared, in comparison to the capacity of the British government in the 1950s/1960s, to take over their services. The study concludes that, in Perú, this will result in a serious loss of crucial services for the vulnerable populations served by nuns.