Dr Rowena Forsyth Poster 2

Dr Rowena Forsyth | Ep 14

by Cultural & Society NormsExpert
Watch or listen:
Digital Health and Communities

Dr Rowena Forsyth, a Senior Lecturer in Digital Health at the University of Sydney. Rowena’s work sits at the intersection of health sociology, cyberpsychology, and digital communities, and she has a keen interest in how people use technology collectively for decision-making, support, and connection.

Connect with the guests
Dr Rowena Forsyth

Rowena is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Health at the University of Sydney.

Her focus is health sociology especially qualitative digital health, cyberpsychology, medical tourism and online communities.

Find out more about her work and research at Sydney University here.

Connect on Social Media:

X-twitter Linkedin

In today’s episode of Confessions of a CyberPsychologist, I chat with Rowena about: 

Her Academic Journey

Rowena began her career studying sociology and health services research, focusing on how information was communicated between doctors and laboratory staff during the shift from paper-based to computerised systems. Through this, she became fascinated by the “collective” element of decision-making—how information exchange online can build new communities and foster shared understanding.

Medical Tourism and Online Communities

  • Growing Global Trend
    Medical tourism, where individuals travel abroad for health procedures, has been on the rise, with an estimated 5 million people worldwide engaging in it in 2015. In Australia, roughly 20,000 individuals travel for cosmetic procedures alone each year.
  • Why Go Abroad?
    Contrary to common assumptions that medical tourists are seeking luxury or extreme procedures, Rowena’s research shows they are often everyday people looking to address long-term concerns, such as post-pregnancy body changes. Cost, efficient scheduling, and specialist expertise abroad all play significant roles in their decision-making.
  • Online Support Networks
    Many medical tourists form tight-knit online communities on platforms like Facebook, often closed or private groups where members can safely discuss procedures, post updates, and share healing progress photos. These spaces provide both practical tips and emotional support, evolving into lasting friendships.
  • Shared Stigma: Feeling judged or misunderstood by friends and family, individuals turn to these online groups where their choices are not stigmatised.
  • Paying It Forward: Those who have undergone procedures will often mentor newcomers, offering everything from hospital recommendations to encouragement and first-hand recovery advice.

Professional Communities and Online Identities

  • Privacy and Boundaries
    Health professionals frequently join closed online communities to consult each other, share best practices, and keep up to date with new research. While some keep personal and professional identities separate, others prefer to be authentic across all platforms. Concerns about institutional guidelines and regulatory body oversight also influence how much they share.
  • Benefits of Online Collaboration
    Many practitioners find these digital networks crucial for:
    • Exchanging research and articles
    • Offering peer support for rare or complex cases
    • Facilitating international collaboration, often leading to co-authored publications

Digital Health for Young People

  • Trauma-Informed Approach
    Rowena is involved in a project focusing on 12-year-olds and older adolescents in the Pacific region. Using co-designed workshops and fictional scenarios, researchers explore how teens use digital tools for nutrition and physical activity guidance.
  • Early Findings
    A high percentage of young people (81% of 13-year-olds) already have smartphones and use platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to find health information. The goal is to improve digital literacy, ensuring they access reliable, up-to-date content.

The Future of Cyberpsychology in Australia

Australia’s unique demographic landscape—large geographical distances, diverse populations—creates immense potential for cyberpsychology research. Whether it’s adolescent digital health or the ethical boundaries of online professional identity, the field continues to grow. Academic groups at the University of Sydney, including Rowena’s own team, are keen to welcome more students and researchers to explore how we can use technology wisely and ethically to enrich both patient and practitioner experiences.

Dr Rowena Forsyth's Research and Publications

Source (and more details available): Dr Forsyths Profile at the University of Sydney.

Book Chapters

  • Does Involving Clinicians in Decision Support Development Facilitate System Use Over Time? A Systematic Review. [More Information]
  • Medical Tourism.

 Journals

  • Cosmetic Medical Tourists’ Use of Online Support Communities: Sharing Information, Reciprocity, and Enduring Relationships. [More Information]
  • Health Professionals’ Use of Online Communities for Interprofessional Peer Education. [More Information]
  • How Are Clinicians’ Acceptance and Use of Clinical Decision Support Systems Evaluated Over Time? A Systematic Review. [More Information]
  • Self-reported and accelerometry measures of sleep components in adolescents living in Pacific Island countries and territories: Exploring the role of sociocultural background. [More Information]
  • “I am not just a place for implementation. I should be a partner”: a qualitative study of patient-centered care from the perspective of diabetic patients in Saudi Arabia. [More Information]
  • Increasing Access to Mental Health Services: Videogame Players’ Perspectives. [More Information]
  • Mental Health Help-Seeking Behavior of Male Video Game Players: An Online Survey. [More Information]
  • Patient-centered care in the Middle East and North African region: a systematic literature review. [More Information]
  • It Helps Me With Everything”: A Qualitative Study of the Importance of Exercise for Individuals With Spinal Cord Injury.”. [More Information]
  • Online Group Counseling for Young People Through a Customized Social Networking Platform: Phase 2 of Kids Helpline Circles. [More Information]
  • Comparative optimism about infection and recovery from COVID-19; Implications for adherence with lockdown advice. [More Information]
  • Optimising consent and adherence in high-risk medical settings: nurses’ role as information providers in allogeneic bone marrow transplant. [More Information]
  • Rules of engagement: Journalists’ attitudes to industry influence in health news reporting. [More Information]
  • Views of health journalists, industry employees and news consumers about disclosure and regulation of industry-journalist relationships: An empirical ethical study. [More Information]
  • Women’s views about maternity care: How do women conceptualise the process of continuity? [More Information]
  • Power and Control in Interactions Between Journalists and Health-Related Industries: The View From Industry. [More Information]
  • Trouble in the gap: a bioethical and sociological analysis of informed consent for high-risk medical procedures. [More Information]
  • Health Journalists’ Perceptions of Their Professional Roles and Responsibilities for Ensuring the Veracity of Reports of Health Research. J[More Information]
  • Medicine, the media and political interests. [More Information]
  • Policies and practices on competing interests of academic staff in Australian universities. [More Information]
  • Widening the debate about conflict of interest: addressing relationships between journalists and the pharmaceutical industry. [More Information]
  • Women with gestational diabetes in Vietnam: a qualitative study to determine attitudes and health behaviours. [More Information]
  • Decision Making in a Crowded Room: the Relational Significance of Social Roles in Decisions to Proceed with Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation. [More Information]
  • Tissue donation to biobanks: a review of sociological studies.[More Information]
  • Patient perceptions of carrying their own health information: approaches towards responsibility and playing an active role in their own health – implications for a patient-held health file. [More Information]
  • Distance versus dialogue: modes of engagement of two professional groups participating in a hospital-based video ethnographic study. 
  • Distance versus dialogue: Modes of engagement of two professional groups participating in a hospital-based video ethnographic study. [More Information]
  • Illuminating everyday realities: the significance of video methods for social science and health research. 
  • Are health systems changing in support of patient safety?: A multi-methods evaluation of education, attitudes and practice. [More Information]
  • Video Research in Health: Visibilising the Effects of Computerising Clinical Care. [More Information]
  • When requests become orders – a formative investigation into the impact of a computerized physician order entry system on a pathology laboratory service. [More Information]
  • Whiteboards: Mediating professional tensions in clinical practice. [More Information]
  • The (im)possibilities of clinical democracy. 
  • Visibilising Clinical Work: Video Ethnography in the Contemporary Hospital.  
  • A tale of two hospitals: Assessing cultural landscapes and compositions. [More Information]

Conferences

  • The challenges of adapting a face-to-face intensive qualitative research methodology course for online delivery to graduate level public health students.
  • You have to see it to believe it: Video as a tool for facilitating reflexive health care practice.
  • Video ethnography as a methodology for studying the technologization of practice. 

 Research Reports

  • Quality Domains for the Development of a Consumer Experience Report on Quality of Residential Aged Care. [More Information]
Other podcasts
changing expectations

Changing social engagements and expectations

by Cultural & Society Norms

Most people get a little frustrated when someone checks their phone in the middle of a conversation. But, most of us do it… on a regular basis.

It never used to be socially acceptable to pick something up and start reading it while talking to another. Not many people would pick up a newspaper or a book and start reading it in the middle of a conversation. Yet, we regularly do this with our mobile. It’s become normal.

As a society, we’ve slipped seamlessly into some previously unacceptable social habits with our tech and media usage – especially when others are present. As individuals, workers, families and as a culture, we need to address, challenge and reshift these norms to ones that are more focussed on those physically present with us, rather than those virtually present in another part of the world. 

The interesting phenomenon we are now facing hinges on how much less time we spend building and maintaining the stronger and deeper relationships we have with physical others (which tend to be more enduring and grounding), in contrast to the time spent and reliance we are placing on the shallower and more shifting nature of online relationships. That is not to say there is no value in online relationships, but rather that our cognitive and emotional ‘presence’ has dramatically shifted over the past two decades without us really taking stock of what that means individually and collectively.  

We are doing both ourselves and others a disservice by not being fully present with others. 

A few hints and tips for work: 

  • Don’t take your phone with you into a meeting – unless you are waiting for a call, there is rarely anything so important that it can’t wait until the meeting is finished
  • Keep your phone out of sight while working – having your phone in view while working increases the chance of you randomly checking your phone for messages and notifications, causing you unnecessary distractions and attention shifts

A few hints and tips for home: 

  • Switch your work phone off when you get home
  • Don’t load work emails and work-related apps onto your personal phone
  • Set yourself hours in the day when you can say, ‘I’m no longer working’ – try to stick to it 
  • Keep your phone in your bag or pocket while out with a friend – better yet, leave it at home
  • Negotiate with your family a set of ‘house rules’ and limitations on what and when tech is used in the home
  • Education yourself and your family on why sleep is such a necessary part of current and future mental wellness (Matthew Walkers book on ‘Why We Sleep’ is a good start)
  • Try switching off all technology at least 1-2 hours before bed – giving your brain time to ‘de-escalate’ from the whirlwind that work and life can create.
  • If you can, use separate devices for home and work tasks – giving your brain the cues that you are ‘transitioning’ out of work and into home life and visa versa.

Your psychology and automated processing systems need a daily and weekly rhythm that allows you to regulate your physical, emotional and cognitive energy levels. 

A few hints and tips for managers: 

  • Negotiate digital working practices with your staff and teams.
  • Let people manage their own digital engagement levels after working hours, but make it clear that there is no expectation around communication response times after working hours
  • Set a precedent that if one person sends an email or message to a project platform after work hours, it doesn’t mean that everyone is expected to also do so.
Related Articles
Lost Connections Post Header

Lost Connections – Johann Hari

by Book ReviewsCultural & Society Norms

In this book, Johann Hari goes in search of the answers to help him understand more about the depression that surfaced in his teens and became a big part of his life.

His passion for investigating and writing on various subjects seems to come from a deep desire to find specific answers to deeply personal questions shared by many of us in the West. 

In this book Johann talks to many experts around the world to uncover what is driving the majority of the depression epidemic, how medication is being used to try to solve the personal and social issues that are endemic, and what we can do as individuals to reverse this trend.

The title of the book is a clue into what the cause and potential solution are for the state of depression amongst many in the West.

The overriding principle is that our individualistic life focus has resulted in our pursuit of independence from the group and the severing of ties to our communities that ground us in who we are as part of a group. 

Although we are searching for and think we have found connections in online groups and friends, these online shallow connections cannot replace the deeper offline connections that are essential to our human grounding. 

In the West, moving away from where we grew up is not uncommon. We go away to Uni. We move towns/counties/countries with a new job, for a partner, or in search of a new lifestyle. 

Each new move is a separation from established connections towards new connections. With limited opportunities to build or sustain offline connections wherever we go, many turn online to find substitute connections. 

Although this book is about ‘Uncovering the real causes of depression – and the unexpected solutions’, the premise of the book is true for many who turn to online apps, games, gambling, porn and social media tools. There is a direct link between spending time online and anxiety/depression. 

The solutions Johann provides are, therefore, not just for those who struggle with depression, but for those who find themselves spending more time online than they feel they ought to and need to find a way back to building better, deeper, more real connections with others. 

You can find out more about his book Stolen Focus including some additional notes and snippets to his interviews on the Stolen Focus website. 

About Johann Hari:

Johann Hari is a journalist and author. You can read more about him on his official website. 

Book Review Related Articles
Because Internet Article Header

Because Internet – Gretchen McCullough

by Book ReviewsCultural & Society Norms

Because Internet is an exploration of how the language used on the Internet, and in particular on social media and text messaging, has changed how we communicate with others. 

The book explores how language and communication have evolved, even exploring how it changed with the advent of the landline. It also analyses the differences in languages between the generations and those who are familiar with the use of ‘digital language’ and those who are less so. 

About Gretchen McCullough:

Gretchen is ‘an internet linguist. She analyses the language of the internet, for the people of the internet’. You can find her website here. 

Related Articles