Sharon Batt, PhD
Sharon Batt, PhD, is an award-winning journalist and a former editor of the consumer education magazine Protect Yourself. Following a breast cancer diagnosis in 1988, she co-founded Canada’s first breast cancer advocacy group, Breast Cancer Action Quebec, and wrote the book, Patient No More: The Politics of Breast Cancer. After a decade of activism, Sharon moved to the scholarly research community in Halifax where she began to research health movements. Drawing on her insider experience as a patient and activist, on archival material, and on interviews with leaders in the breast cancer movement, she examined the growing phenomenon of partnerships between “big pharma” and patient advocacy organizations. The result is a new book, Health Advocacy Inc., which documents how pharmaceutical industry funding fractured Canada’s breast cancer movement, compromising its democratic ideals. She is now an independent scholar and adjunct professor in Dalhousie University’s Department of Bioethics.
