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Heather Dillaway

Wayne State University Detroit Mi, Sociology, Faculty Member

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Heather Dillaway received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Michigan State University in 2002. Some of her research interests are: menopause, reproductive health, women and aging, women and disabilities, body/embodiment, motherhood, and race/class/gender/sexuality (intersectionality). Most of her recent research focuses on menopause and midlife and women with disabilities. She typically teaches courses on race and gender inequalities, women and health, social and behavioral aspects of health, families, qualitative methods, and research methods.

In addition to her responsibilities in Sociology, Heather Dillaway is also Associate Dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State where she coordinates curriculum matters, graduate student and graduate program matters, and academic program reviews.

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Noel B. Salazar

KU Leuven

Golam Khandaker

University of Cambridge

Eric S . Kim (UBC)

University of British Columbia

Central European University

Kansas State University

The Open University

Syracuse University

Monica J Casper

San Diego State University

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

University of Miami

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Papers by Heather Dillaway

Waiting for Seventeen Days

Musings on Perimenopause and Menopause

Looking Back on 20 Years: The Michigan Family Review

Michigan Family Review, 2017

Speaking to a Broader Audience about Medicalization

Sex Roles, 2017

Reconsidering Successful Aging

Journal of Applied Gerontology, 2009

Many scholars now critique successful aging terminology. Nonetheless, there is incomplete analysi... more Many scholars now critique successful aging terminology. Nonetheless, there is incomplete analysis of the political motivations behind the development of and/or effects of widespread use of these terms. This article suggests that analysis of the people who developed the terms and the settings within which they work parallels an analysis of the terms themselves and illustrates the continuing negative perception of aging. This study fleshes out a more thorough critique of the sociopolitical contexts surrounding the successful aging paradigm so that it can help renew and expand existing critiques. The authors conclude that researchers need to be wary of adopting successful aging terminology without considering and expanding their understanding of the political motivations and results that accompanies it. New, expanded conceptualizations of successful aging are needed so that socially minded researchers and practitioners of gerontology do not contribute to ageism and discrimination agai...

Quality of Life and Wellbeing in Peripheral Arterial Disease: A Qualitative Study

Innovation in Aging, 2021

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a vascular condition disproportionately affecting adults &gt... more Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a vascular condition disproportionately affecting adults > 60 and the leading cause of disability for adults > 50. Because PAD is marked by severe leg pain and sometimes lower extremity amputation, quality of life (QOL) and wellbeing may be compromised however, we understand little about these constructs in this population. Furthermore, surgical care providers lack a comprehensive understanding of how individuals think about wellbeing and what is important to individuals during surgical care. We conducted a qualitative photographic elicitation study (n = 60) in one academic multidisciplinary PAD clinic to understand specific aspects of QOL of older individuals with PAD. Guided by interpretive description, a methodology pioneered in nursing, we analyzed data within and across five clinical symptom severity categories to examine for QOL constructs, impact on everyday life, understanding of disease, and desired treatment. Results demonstrate t...

Jean Ait Belkhir , Race , Gender & Class Journal Intersectionality and Childbirth : How Women from Different Social Locations Discuss

Analyzing unpublished primary data from two separate qualitative studies, the authors employ an i... more Analyzing unpublished primary data from two separate qualitative studies, the authors employ an intersectionality framework to compare the experiences of two different samples of birthing women. Examining commonalities and differences inhow women perceive and decide about epidurals in the hospital setting, the authors argue that feminist critiques of the medicalization of childbirth should be expanded to address race, class, and age as structures of oppression and privilege that shape women's reproductive experiences. Findings are based on qualitative analyses of 19 interviews with predominantly White, middleto upperclass women in a MidAtlantic state and 5 1 interviews with African American teens in a Southern state. Generally, Southern teens emphasized medical risks associated with the epidural and based decisions to forego the epidural on concerns about their wellbeing. Alternatively, MidAtlantic adults defined the epidural as a safe way to avoid the pain associated with child...

Living in Uncertain Times: Experiences of Menopause and Reproductive Aging

The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Menstruation Studies

This chapter explores the everyday experiences of women living in and passing through the stages ... more This chapter explores the everyday experiences of women living in and passing through the stages of perimenopause and menopause, a transition that brings both physical change and identity change. Dillaway approaches this subject by examining the myriad uncertainties that women face during this transition, attributing many of them to confusion around the definitions of perimenopause and menopause; ambiguous signs and symptoms; conflicted feelings about ageing; and reflections on both previous and current motherhood and family experiences. Women think about and navigate these uncertainties in varied ways, Dillaway says, and she concludes that part of the everyday experience of this reproductive- and life-course transition is learning to live in and with uncertainty.

“Now I have hope”: Rebuilding relationships affected by chronic pain

Families, Systems, & Health

A novel couple-based intervention for chronic pain and relationship distress: A pilot study

Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice

From the Guest Editors: Gender, Disability, and Intersectionality

Gender & Society

Trajectories of Aging among US Older Adults: Mixed Evidence for a Hispanic Paradox

The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences, Jan 17, 2018

A well-documented paradox is that Hispanics tend to live longer than non-Hispanic Whites (NHW), d... more A well-documented paradox is that Hispanics tend to live longer than non-Hispanic Whites (NHW), despite structural disadvantages. We evaluate whether the "Hispanic paradox" extends to more comprehensive longitudinal aging classifications and examine how lifecourse factors relate to these groupings. We used biennial data (1998-2014) on adults 65-years and older at baseline from the Health and Retirement Study. We use joint latent class discrete time and growth curve modeling to identify trajectories of aging, and multinomial logit models to determine whether US-born (USB-H) and Foreign-born (FB-H) Hispanics experience healthier styles of aging than non-Hispanic Whites (NHW), and test how lifecycle factors influence this relationship. We identify four trajectory classes including, "cognitive unhealthy," "high morbidity," "non-accelerated", and "healthy." Compared to NHWs, both USB-H and FB-H have higher relative risk ratios (RRR) of &q...

Waiting to Happen: The Sociology of Unexpected InjuriesWaiting to Happen: The Sociology of Unexpected Injuries, by TeppermanLorneMeredithNicole. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press Canada, 2016. 226 pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780199012060

Contemporary Sociology, 2017

Life begins at 60: Identifying the social support needs of African American women aging with HIV

Journal of health care for the poor and underserved, 2017

HIV chronicity has resulted in increased life expectancy for many African American women who acqu... more HIV chronicity has resulted in increased life expectancy for many African American women who acquired the disease during the epidemic's peak years. As these women live longer and age, their social support needs may increase. Five focus groups were conducted in Washington, DC with 23 HIV-positive African American women aged 52-65 to explore women's perceptions about how aging and HIV chronicity affects their social support needs. Participants were recruited from the longitudinal Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) participant pool. A constant comparison approach was applied during data analysis. Participants reported needing increased social support, especially emotional support from health care providers, family, and HIV-positive peers. The importance of providers and HIV-positive peers was discussed most frequently relative to meeting these needs. Health care providers in particular may need to increase their provision of emotional support when devising treatment plans...

Medicalization Survived the Women's Health Initiative … But, Has Discourse Opened Up?

Women's Reproductive Health, 2015

Talking “Among Us”: How Women From Different Racial–Ethnic Groups Define and Discuss Menopause

Health Care for Women International, Jul 30, 2008

Against a backdrop of scant literature on commonalities and differences among diverse groups of m... more Against a backdrop of scant literature on commonalities and differences among diverse groups of menopausal women within the United States, and little attempt by scholars in any country to study the ways in which both privilege and oppression can shape women's ideas and experiences of menopause, in this study, 61 menopausal women of varied racial–ethnic and class locations in a Midwestern state were asked about the different meanings and experiences of menopause. African American women and Chicanas, particularly working- ...

Normal and Natural, or Burdensome and Terrible? Women with Spinal Cord Injuries Discuss Ambivalence about Menstruation

by Catherine Lysack and Heather Dillaway

Sex Roles, 2013

Literature on women's reproductive health experiences after spinal cord injuries (SCI) documents ... more Literature on women's reproductive health experiences after spinal cord injuries (SCI) documents a temporary period of amenorrhea after women's injuries. However, research is lacking on how women with SCI feel about amenorrhea or menstruation. That is, we do not know the meanings that women with permanent, physical disability ascribe to their experiences of simultaneously "normal" and "abnormal" reproductive processes. Prioritizing a feminist disability perspective and using interview data from a snowball sample of 20 women with SCI in Detroit, Michigan, in the United States, we outline how interviewees are ambivalent (yet also slightly negative) towards menstruation and amenorrhea within the context of their disability, and may be both different from and similar to able-bodied women in their attitudes and experiences as a result.

‘My Doctor Told Me I Can Still Have Children But …’: Contradictions in Women’s Reproductive Health Experiences after Spinal Cord Injury

by Catherine Lysack and Heather Dillaway

Reframing Reproduction, 2014

Do risk perceptions explain sex differences in community integration and participation after spinal cord injury?

by Catherine Lysack and Heather Dillaway

The Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine, 2014

Objective: To describe how men and women with spinal cord injury rate the risks posed by a set of... more Objective: To describe how men and women with spinal cord injury rate the risks posed by a set of everyday activities measured using the Risk Inventory for persons with Spinal Cord Injury (RISCI), and to examine whether sex differences are related to community integration and participation. Design: Cohort study. Setting: Metropolitan Detroit. Participants: One hundred and forty community-dwelling white and African-American men and women with SCI. Outcome measures: RISCI scores, community integration, and level of and satisfaction with community participation. Results: Study participants were just over age 40 years, and had been living with SCI for 10.8 years. One-third were women and 40% were African-American. Results showed women with SCI had higher RISCI scores (perceived more dangers) on every item on the RISCI Scale (P < 0.001). The items perceived to hold greatest risk were revealing personal information to others, going on a blind date, and going for a roll ("walk") alone after dark. Women with higher RISCI scores reported lower community integration (P < 0.05) and lower levels of and lower satisfaction with community participation (P < 0.01). For men, however, RISCI scores were mainly unrelated (except for community integration) to participation measures. Conclusion: More research is needed to determine whether the levels of risk perceived by women are warranted and whether a sense of vulnerability for women with SCI is unnecessarily limiting their chances at "a good life" after injury.

Encounters with Inaccessibility: The Contexts Women with Spinal Cord Injury Face when Seeking Gynecological Health Care

by Catherine Lysack and Heather Dillaway

Research in Social Science and Disability, 2014

Purpose À We explore the effects and interplay of physical and social environments on the inacces... more Purpose À We explore the effects and interplay of physical and social environments on the inaccessibility of gynecological health care for women with spinal cord injury. We also explore women's responses to the inaccessibility of this care, in hopes of trying to understand better how women navigate their gynecological health and health care when faced with physical and social environmental constraints.

Book Review: Grandmothers at Work: Juggling Families and Jobs by Madonna Harrington Meyer

Gender & Society, 2014

Waiting for Seventeen Days

Musings on Perimenopause and Menopause

Looking Back on 20 Years: The Michigan Family Review

Michigan Family Review, 2017

Speaking to a Broader Audience about Medicalization

Sex Roles, 2017

Reconsidering Successful Aging

Journal of Applied Gerontology, 2009

Many scholars now critique successful aging terminology. Nonetheless, there is incomplete analysi... more Many scholars now critique successful aging terminology. Nonetheless, there is incomplete analysis of the political motivations behind the development of and/or effects of widespread use of these terms. This article suggests that analysis of the people who developed the terms and the settings within which they work parallels an analysis of the terms themselves and illustrates the continuing negative perception of aging. This study fleshes out a more thorough critique of the sociopolitical contexts surrounding the successful aging paradigm so that it can help renew and expand existing critiques. The authors conclude that researchers need to be wary of adopting successful aging terminology without considering and expanding their understanding of the political motivations and results that accompanies it. New, expanded conceptualizations of successful aging are needed so that socially minded researchers and practitioners of gerontology do not contribute to ageism and discrimination agai...

Quality of Life and Wellbeing in Peripheral Arterial Disease: A Qualitative Study

Innovation in Aging, 2021

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a vascular condition disproportionately affecting adults &gt... more Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a vascular condition disproportionately affecting adults > 60 and the leading cause of disability for adults > 50. Because PAD is marked by severe leg pain and sometimes lower extremity amputation, quality of life (QOL) and wellbeing may be compromised however, we understand little about these constructs in this population. Furthermore, surgical care providers lack a comprehensive understanding of how individuals think about wellbeing and what is important to individuals during surgical care. We conducted a qualitative photographic elicitation study (n = 60) in one academic multidisciplinary PAD clinic to understand specific aspects of QOL of older individuals with PAD. Guided by interpretive description, a methodology pioneered in nursing, we analyzed data within and across five clinical symptom severity categories to examine for QOL constructs, impact on everyday life, understanding of disease, and desired treatment. Results demonstrate t...

Jean Ait Belkhir , Race , Gender & Class Journal Intersectionality and Childbirth : How Women from Different Social Locations Discuss

Analyzing unpublished primary data from two separate qualitative studies, the authors employ an i... more Analyzing unpublished primary data from two separate qualitative studies, the authors employ an intersectionality framework to compare the experiences of two different samples of birthing women. Examining commonalities and differences inhow women perceive and decide about epidurals in the hospital setting, the authors argue that feminist critiques of the medicalization of childbirth should be expanded to address race, class, and age as structures of oppression and privilege that shape women's reproductive experiences. Findings are based on qualitative analyses of 19 interviews with predominantly White, middleto upperclass women in a MidAtlantic state and 5 1 interviews with African American teens in a Southern state. Generally, Southern teens emphasized medical risks associated with the epidural and based decisions to forego the epidural on concerns about their wellbeing. Alternatively, MidAtlantic adults defined the epidural as a safe way to avoid the pain associated with child...

Living in Uncertain Times: Experiences of Menopause and Reproductive Aging

The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Menstruation Studies

This chapter explores the everyday experiences of women living in and passing through the stages ... more This chapter explores the everyday experiences of women living in and passing through the stages of perimenopause and menopause, a transition that brings both physical change and identity change. Dillaway approaches this subject by examining the myriad uncertainties that women face during this transition, attributing many of them to confusion around the definitions of perimenopause and menopause; ambiguous signs and symptoms; conflicted feelings about ageing; and reflections on both previous and current motherhood and family experiences. Women think about and navigate these uncertainties in varied ways, Dillaway says, and she concludes that part of the everyday experience of this reproductive- and life-course transition is learning to live in and with uncertainty.

“Now I have hope”: Rebuilding relationships affected by chronic pain

Families, Systems, & Health

A novel couple-based intervention for chronic pain and relationship distress: A pilot study

Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice

From the Guest Editors: Gender, Disability, and Intersectionality

Gender & Society

Trajectories of Aging among US Older Adults: Mixed Evidence for a Hispanic Paradox

The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences, Jan 17, 2018

A well-documented paradox is that Hispanics tend to live longer than non-Hispanic Whites (NHW), d... more A well-documented paradox is that Hispanics tend to live longer than non-Hispanic Whites (NHW), despite structural disadvantages. We evaluate whether the "Hispanic paradox" extends to more comprehensive longitudinal aging classifications and examine how lifecourse factors relate to these groupings. We used biennial data (1998-2014) on adults 65-years and older at baseline from the Health and Retirement Study. We use joint latent class discrete time and growth curve modeling to identify trajectories of aging, and multinomial logit models to determine whether US-born (USB-H) and Foreign-born (FB-H) Hispanics experience healthier styles of aging than non-Hispanic Whites (NHW), and test how lifecycle factors influence this relationship. We identify four trajectory classes including, "cognitive unhealthy," "high morbidity," "non-accelerated", and "healthy." Compared to NHWs, both USB-H and FB-H have higher relative risk ratios (RRR) of &q...

Waiting to Happen: The Sociology of Unexpected InjuriesWaiting to Happen: The Sociology of Unexpected Injuries, by TeppermanLorneMeredithNicole. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press Canada, 2016. 226 pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780199012060

Contemporary Sociology, 2017

Life begins at 60: Identifying the social support needs of African American women aging with HIV

Journal of health care for the poor and underserved, 2017

HIV chronicity has resulted in increased life expectancy for many African American women who acqu... more HIV chronicity has resulted in increased life expectancy for many African American women who acquired the disease during the epidemic's peak years. As these women live longer and age, their social support needs may increase. Five focus groups were conducted in Washington, DC with 23 HIV-positive African American women aged 52-65 to explore women's perceptions about how aging and HIV chronicity affects their social support needs. Participants were recruited from the longitudinal Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) participant pool. A constant comparison approach was applied during data analysis. Participants reported needing increased social support, especially emotional support from health care providers, family, and HIV-positive peers. The importance of providers and HIV-positive peers was discussed most frequently relative to meeting these needs. Health care providers in particular may need to increase their provision of emotional support when devising treatment plans...

Medicalization Survived the Women's Health Initiative … But, Has Discourse Opened Up?

Women's Reproductive Health, 2015

Talking “Among Us”: How Women From Different Racial–Ethnic Groups Define and Discuss Menopause

Health Care for Women International, Jul 30, 2008

Against a backdrop of scant literature on commonalities and differences among diverse groups of m... more Against a backdrop of scant literature on commonalities and differences among diverse groups of menopausal women within the United States, and little attempt by scholars in any country to study the ways in which both privilege and oppression can shape women's ideas and experiences of menopause, in this study, 61 menopausal women of varied racial–ethnic and class locations in a Midwestern state were asked about the different meanings and experiences of menopause. African American women and Chicanas, particularly working- ...

Normal and Natural, or Burdensome and Terrible? Women with Spinal Cord Injuries Discuss Ambivalence about Menstruation

by Catherine Lysack and Heather Dillaway

Sex Roles, 2013

Literature on women's reproductive health experiences after spinal cord injuries (SCI) documents ... more Literature on women's reproductive health experiences after spinal cord injuries (SCI) documents a temporary period of amenorrhea after women's injuries. However, research is lacking on how women with SCI feel about amenorrhea or menstruation. That is, we do not know the meanings that women with permanent, physical disability ascribe to their experiences of simultaneously "normal" and "abnormal" reproductive processes. Prioritizing a feminist disability perspective and using interview data from a snowball sample of 20 women with SCI in Detroit, Michigan, in the United States, we outline how interviewees are ambivalent (yet also slightly negative) towards menstruation and amenorrhea within the context of their disability, and may be both different from and similar to able-bodied women in their attitudes and experiences as a result.

‘My Doctor Told Me I Can Still Have Children But …’: Contradictions in Women’s Reproductive Health Experiences after Spinal Cord Injury

by Catherine Lysack and Heather Dillaway

Reframing Reproduction, 2014

Do risk perceptions explain sex differences in community integration and participation after spinal cord injury?

by Catherine Lysack and Heather Dillaway

The Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine, 2014

Objective: To describe how men and women with spinal cord injury rate the risks posed by a set of... more Objective: To describe how men and women with spinal cord injury rate the risks posed by a set of everyday activities measured using the Risk Inventory for persons with Spinal Cord Injury (RISCI), and to examine whether sex differences are related to community integration and participation. Design: Cohort study. Setting: Metropolitan Detroit. Participants: One hundred and forty community-dwelling white and African-American men and women with SCI. Outcome measures: RISCI scores, community integration, and level of and satisfaction with community participation. Results: Study participants were just over age 40 years, and had been living with SCI for 10.8 years. One-third were women and 40% were African-American. Results showed women with SCI had higher RISCI scores (perceived more dangers) on every item on the RISCI Scale (P < 0.001). The items perceived to hold greatest risk were revealing personal information to others, going on a blind date, and going for a roll ("walk") alone after dark. Women with higher RISCI scores reported lower community integration (P < 0.05) and lower levels of and lower satisfaction with community participation (P < 0.01). For men, however, RISCI scores were mainly unrelated (except for community integration) to participation measures. Conclusion: More research is needed to determine whether the levels of risk perceived by women are warranted and whether a sense of vulnerability for women with SCI is unnecessarily limiting their chances at "a good life" after injury.

Encounters with Inaccessibility: The Contexts Women with Spinal Cord Injury Face when Seeking Gynecological Health Care

by Catherine Lysack and Heather Dillaway

Research in Social Science and Disability, 2014

Purpose À We explore the effects and interplay of physical and social environments on the inacces... more Purpose À We explore the effects and interplay of physical and social environments on the inaccessibility of gynecological health care for women with spinal cord injury. We also explore women's responses to the inaccessibility of this care, in hopes of trying to understand better how women navigate their gynecological health and health care when faced with physical and social environmental constraints.

Book Review: Grandmothers at Work: Juggling Families and Jobs by Madonna Harrington Meyer

Gender & Society, 2014

Speaking to a Broader Audience about Medicalization The Wrong Prescription for Women: How Medicine and Media Create a BNeed^ for Treatments, Drugs, and Surgery. Edited

Feminist scholars in particular have spent considerable time theorizing and analyzing the ways in... more Feminist scholars in particular have spent considerable time theorizing and analyzing the ways in which biomedicine and the media define and treat women's bodies, and McHugh and Chrisler plant The Wrong Prescription for Women firmly within this tradition. At first glance, then, this volume is just another easy-to-read, descriptive collection of chapters on the negative effects of medicalization on women's health and women's bodies. However, as good social scientists and experienced editors, McHugh and Chrisler present much more than a tired collection of descriptive works. These editors explicitly argue that medicalization affects women's healthcare options and women's agency and that it ultimately maintains a gendered status quo. The editors work against this status quo by encouraging individual authors first to present an informed, research-based discussion about the effects of medicalization and subsequently to provide an alternative and/or non-medicalized perspective on each topic they discuss. In academic literature, it is extremely rare to see both a critique of medicalization and an explicit discussion of non-medicalized views in one volume, but McHugh and Chrisler recruited a group of authors who seemingly do this with ease.