Medical Anthropology最新文献

The history of HIV/AIDS is often told from the Global North, a viewpoint that is naturalized in policies and programs that privilege biomedical models of treatment and prevention. This article explores how one Indonesian transgender population known as waria became the subject of various forms of research since the 1980s. Research was one way that waria came to be classified as part of the key population of "transgender people." Drawing on an oral history project conducted in 2021/2022, we show how - while necessarily hierarchical - ethnographic accounts of other HIV/AIDS histories can rethink fundamental global health concepts.

The obstetric violence framework proposes that clinicians harm pregnant people through physical and psychological mistreatment and violations of autonomy. In this article, we analyze interviews with 54 obstetrician-gynecologists (OB-GYNs) practicing in US states with near-total abortion bans to show how similar harms may also be performed through actions of the state. Reframing obstetric harm to include the behind-the-scenes work of state legislators as a looming presence in the clinical encounter permits us to see OB-GYNs from a different vantage point, and to understand their role as experiencing - and not just perpetuating - obstetric harm.

In the United States, women of color experience worse pregnancy and birth outcomes than white women. Likewise, many women of color report facing discrimination from perinatal health providers, and many experience precarity that can negatively impact birth experiences and outcomes. In this context, more women of color now embrace the use of community-based doulas. Using ethnographic data, I argue that community-based doulas, as members of the communities in which they offer their services, are uniquely able to negotiate the tensions between their clients and biomedical birth practitioners to engender acts of transformative agency and forward the cause of reproductive justice.

Abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) are pathologic enlargements of the aorta that, if they rupture, are usually fatal. Patients can undergo high-risk surgery to prevent rupture. We explored AAA patients' surgical journeys to understand decision-making and unmet needs. Major interview themes included fear of death, risk perception, importance of partner support, communication with providers, and preparedness for surgery and recovery. The nature of AAAs as chronic conditions that can suddenly become acutely life-threatening lends a unique context to patient decision-making. Understanding patient perspectives and values when undergoing AAA repairs can improve surgeons' abilities to meet patient needs and facilitate shared decision-making.

Communities with already high rates of non-communicable diseases, including Mexican immigrants living in the Bronx, were burdened further by the novel coronavirus. In this context, many individuals sought ways to prevent and mitigate symptoms of COVID-19, including homemade remedies. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews with Mexican immigrants living in the Bronx reveal how they devised and deployed remedios caseros (home remedies) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants attributed use of remedios caseros to factors such as overpacked hospitals and limited information from authoritative sources about preventing and alleviating COVID-19. Findings suggest that home remedies were a survival strategy born out of necessity, or imperative resilience.Media teaser: Mexican immigrants devised and deployed strategies around remedios caseros in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Sensations have emerged as an increasingly important topic in anthropological studies of health and disease. In this article, I draw from ethnographic research conducted among people living with selected rare inherited metabolic diseases (IMDs) and their caregivers in Poland, focusing specifically on recurrent rhabdomyolysis, a long-term complication that affects energy-consuming organs and muscles. Employing insights from sensorial and medical anthropology, I examine how people with IMDs and their caregivers, as parent-patient units, build anticipatory sensorial knowledge that enables them to attend to bodily sensations symptomatic of elevated creatine kinase levels, which are characteristic of rhabdomyolysis.

I draw on interviews I conducted in Germany with four individuals who were eventually diagnosed with mitochondrial disease, a category of rare neurogenetic disorders. Rather than the diagnosis of mitochondrial disease serving as a threshold between a before and after, I show how multiple ″diagnostic moments″ generate and shape mitochondrial disease life narratives as affected individuals embody emergent medical knowledge and navigate scientific unknowns. Attending to the plurality of diagnostic moments in rare disease life narratives illuminates the fragmented temporalities and incoherencies of illness experiences, which are often erased by an emphasis on a singular diagnostic moment.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Ghanaian officials and international developers in the field of health information systems, we investigate how innovations in health data infrastructures are aligned with global practices of epidemiological accountability. The digital health information system DHIS2 has been adopted in various low- and middle-income countries, including Ghana. While global stakeholders render public health a matter of efficiency and accountability, public health professionals attune at various levels to emerging global health priorities and data practices, e.g. the translation of standard case definitions and quantitative measures into local contexts, or innovations in reporting channels of key public health indicators.

Based on multi-sited fieldwork in Denmark, I explore how Danish women and men negotiate their positions as potential victims of intimate partner violence: in particular, psychological violence. First, focusing on retrospective stories about everyday life, I argue that violence may be experienced as subtle and not necessarily noisy. Second, by turning my attention to public narratives about psychological violence, I demonstrate that they often fail to align with the interlocutors' stories. This, I suggest, can lead to transgressive behavior being interpreted as nonviolence. This article offers a detailed analysis of the subtle micro-mechanisms that underpin the first manifestations of violence.

The relationship between African governments and ethnomedical practices is marked by policy dilemma and ideological conflicts. Through an ethnographic study spanning 2016-17 and employing "violence" as an analytical framework, this article shows how the socialist Derg regime in Ethiopia (1974-1991) devastated ethnomedicinal practice of ethnic Kumpal. The regime persecuted practitioners, accusing them of aiding insurgents with bulletproofing remedies, dismissing their beliefs as feudal remnants, and coercing the community to renounce traditions through oathing. The article presents an uncommon case study of brutal forms of violence by an African socialist regime targeting its own people over their ethnomedical practices.