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Lamarche Larkin, Sessional Instructor

photo of Larkin Lamarche

Larkin Lamarche

Sessional Instructor

Contract and Sessional Faculty
Department of Health Aging & Society

Biography

Larkin Lamarche is a Research Associate and part-time Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University. Their research focuses on body image experiences. So far, their research has examined the links between body image, self-presentational concerns and health behaviours across the lifespan. Larkin’s recent introduction to primary care research in their current role has shaped their current direction. They are involved in research on Health TAPESTRY (a complex intervention which integrates community volunteers, the interprofessional health care team, technology, and community engagement aimed to help people stay healthier for longer in the places where they live) and TAPER (Team Approach to Polypharmacy Evaluation and Reduction: a structured clinical pathway aimed at reducing the number of medications, involving linked pharmacist-family physician appointments, evidence supports for systematic focus on potentially inappropriate medications, and integration of patient priorities and preferences). Exposure to primary care research through these two projects, Larkin has created the recent goal to blend the two worlds – body image in primary care – and so they are planning to work toward understanding how body image is understood by primary health care providers and manifests in people who use the primary health care system. They are passionate about making body image conversations more stigma-free and less medicalized in primary health care, particularly in vulnerable populations (i.e., those who are gender diverse, those with mental illness, those with multi chronic conditions). Larkin has also recently got hooked on wanting to understand positive body image. They are also quite interested and comfortable in using various methods to ask and answer questions using a variety of research questions. A diehard believer in positive body image experiences, recovery from mental illness, and patient-focused care, Larkin seeks to conduct research to ultimately understand how to foster overall well-being.