Pub Date : 2022-02-15DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-81.1.83
Patricia M Clay, Courtland L. Smith
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Pub Date : 2022-02-15DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-81.1.71
Lauren Smith
{"title":"Reflection on: “The Cultural Conceptions of Dengue Fever in the Cayo District of Belize”","authors":"Lauren Smith","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-81.1.71","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-81.1.71","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49336698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-15DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-81.1.1
Catherine M. Mitchell Fuentes
Feminists anthropologists have long fought against idealized discourses of the “good” mother based on traditional, White, middle-class, heterosexual values. Extensive participant-observation, in-depth interviews with twenty-one mothers and focus groups with a total of sixty-four mothers incarcerated in a large, urban county jail in North Carolina revealed marginalized women’s pathways to incarceration via trauma (particularly physical/sexual violence beginning in childhood) and its sequela (e.g., substance abuse, sex work, abusive partners) within a context of scarce resources. This research sought to illuminate how such events have shaped women’s motherhood experiences, definitions of “good” mothers, self-definitions as mothers, and motherhood goals. Incarcerated mothers in this study both accepted and resisted hegemonic discourses of “good” mothering by simultaneously retaining and redefining motherhood in adverse circumstances in ways that can be best understood through the model of motherhood that I label the “struggling good mother.” Specific service and policy recommendations are offered that address ways to ameliorate the structural inequalities that prevent marginalized women’s ability to access basic resources needed to break the seemingly endless cycle of trauma, its consequences, and incarceration in the lives of incarcerated mothers and their children.
{"title":"The “Struggling Good Mother:” The Role of Marginalization, Trauma, and Interpersonal Violence in Incarcerated Women’s Mothering Experiences and Goals","authors":"Catherine M. Mitchell Fuentes","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-81.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-81.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"Feminists anthropologists have long fought against idealized discourses of the “good” mother based on traditional, White, middle-class, heterosexual values. Extensive participant-observation, in-depth interviews with twenty-one mothers and focus groups with a total of sixty-four mothers incarcerated in a large, urban county jail in North Carolina revealed marginalized women’s pathways to incarceration via trauma (particularly physical/sexual violence beginning in childhood) and its sequela (e.g., substance abuse, sex work, abusive partners) within a context of scarce resources. This research sought to illuminate how such events have shaped women’s motherhood experiences, definitions of “good” mothers, self-definitions as mothers, and motherhood goals. Incarcerated mothers in this study both accepted and resisted hegemonic discourses of “good” mothering by simultaneously retaining and redefining motherhood in adverse circumstances in ways that can be best understood through the model of motherhood that I label the “struggling good mother.” Specific service and policy recommendations are offered that address ways to ameliorate the structural inequalities that prevent marginalized women’s ability to access basic resources needed to break the seemingly endless cycle of trauma, its consequences, and incarceration in the lives of incarcerated mothers and their children.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42580764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.282
J. Scott
A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly half of the United States prison population, or five times the rate found in the general population, had been infected. Limited social distancing and difficult to implement preventative measures helped to spread COVID-19 in prisons, while many incarcerated individuals felt that government policy prevented their ability to self-care. These feelings of alienation reflect a history of policy that links disease to deviance and social death. Based on the written self-reflections of anthropology students in Wisconsin prisons, this article outlines an ethnographic and pedagogical model for analyzing pandemic policy. Students learned to relate anthropological terminology to their critiques of policy and revealed how prisoners adapted to feelings of invisibility and hopelessness during a pandemic.
{"title":"“Whoever Dies, Dies”: A Pedagogical Model forUnderstanding the COVID-19 Outbreak in United States Prisons","authors":"J. Scott","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.282","url":null,"abstract":"A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly half of the United States prison population, or five times the rate found in the general population, had been infected. Limited social distancing and difficult to implement preventative measures helped to spread COVID-19 in prisons, while many incarcerated individuals felt that government policy prevented their ability to self-care. These feelings of alienation reflect a history of policy that links disease to deviance and social death. Based on the written self-reflections of anthropology students in Wisconsin prisons, this article outlines an ethnographic and pedagogical model for analyzing pandemic policy. Students learned to relate anthropological terminology to their critiques of policy and revealed how prisoners adapted to feelings of invisibility and hopelessness during a pandemic.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48895789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.272
Shana Harris, Allison Schlosser
Harm reduction is a public health approach that emphasizes reducing the negative effects of drug use rather than eliminating it. It has been practiced for decades; however, the COVID-19 pandemic poses new challenges for people who use drugs (PWUD) and harm reduction providers. In the United States, public health recommendations to curb the pandemic are complicating harm reduction efforts. Harm reduction programs are rethinking how they engage with PWUD to comply with these recommendations while also providing essential services. In this article, we draw on academic literature, news articles, and information distributed by harm reduction programs to discuss issues currently faced by PWUD and harm reduction providers across the country. This discussion focuses on policy changes and programming adaptations related to three harm reduction interventions—syringe services programs, overdose prevention, and medications for opioid use disorder—that have emerged or gained traction during the pandemic. We argue that anthropologists should play a key role in addressing the obstacles and opportunities for harm reduction in the United States during and post-pandemic. Ethnographic research can generate important knowledge of how pandemic-related service and policy changes are localized by providers and experienced by PWUD and uncover how race, class, and gender may shape access to and experiences with modified harm reduction services. Applied anthropologists also have an important role in collaborating with harm reduction programs to ensure that the voices of marginalized individuals are not ignored as policy and programming changes take place during and after the pandemic.
{"title":"At the Intersection of Harm Reduction and COVID-19: The Role of Anthropologists during and Post-Pandemic","authors":"Shana Harris, Allison Schlosser","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.272","url":null,"abstract":"Harm reduction is a public health approach that emphasizes reducing the negative effects of drug use rather than eliminating it. It has been practiced for decades; however, the COVID-19 pandemic poses new challenges for people who use drugs (PWUD) and harm reduction providers. In the United States, public health recommendations to curb the pandemic are complicating harm reduction efforts. Harm reduction programs are rethinking how they engage with PWUD to comply with these recommendations while also providing essential services. In this article, we draw on academic literature, news articles, and information distributed by harm reduction programs to discuss issues currently faced by PWUD and harm reduction providers across the country. This discussion focuses on policy changes and programming adaptations related to three harm reduction interventions—syringe services programs, overdose prevention, and medications for opioid use disorder—that have emerged or gained traction during the pandemic. We argue that anthropologists should play a key role in addressing the obstacles and opportunities for harm reduction in the United States during and post-pandemic. Ethnographic research can generate important knowledge of how pandemic-related service and policy changes are localized by providers and experienced by PWUD and uncover how race, class, and gender may shape access to and experiences with modified harm reduction services. Applied anthropologists also have an important role in collaborating with harm reduction programs to ensure that the voices of marginalized individuals are not ignored as policy and programming changes take place during and after the pandemic.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41399811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.332
Kristin Hedges
There have been enormous strides in response to the AIDS epidemic in the past decades; however, adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) remain at high risk for new HIV infection throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Recognizing this continued discrepancy, I call for more attention to girls’ perceptions of vulnerabilities by revisiting an ethnographic study of HIV risk carried out in 2004 in a rural community in Kenya. My analysis situates Maasai AGYW perceptions and understandings of HIV risk as a culturally constructed idiom of distress: “Ukimwi ni Homa” (AIDS is a fever). I examine the emic perspectives of HIV vulnerability and the association of sexual relationships within the context of economic precarity. Findings demonstrate how references to fevers expressed feelings of helplessness, which increased indifference to HIV risk. This indifference led AGYW to prioritize imminent economic needs over long-term effects of a viral infection that they perceived as inevitable. Critically reflecting on AGYW understandings of their own risk perceptions can influence effective HIV intervention design. My conclusions support the need for tailoring combination prevention approaches to address perceived vulnerabilities within populations. Such perspectives add valuable insights to studies rooted in cultural constructions of illness perspective.
在过去几十年中，在应对艾滋病流行方面取得了巨大进展；然而，在整个撒哈拉以南非洲地区，少女和年轻妇女感染新的艾滋病毒的风险仍然很高。认识到这种持续的差异，我呼吁通过重新审视2004年在肯尼亚一个农村社区进行的一项关于艾滋病毒风险的民族志研究，更多地关注女孩对脆弱性的看法。我的分析将马赛AGYW对艾滋病毒风险的看法和理解定位为一种文化构建的痛苦习语：“Ukimwi ni Homa”（艾滋病是一种发烧）。我在经济不稳定的背景下研究了艾滋病毒脆弱性和性关系关联的流行病视角。研究结果表明，发烧是如何表达无助感的，这增加了人们对艾滋病毒风险的漠不关心。这种漠不关心导致AGYW将迫在眉睫的经济需求置于他们认为不可避免的病毒感染的长期影响之上。批判性地反思AGYW对自身风险认知的理解可以影响有效的HIV干预设计。我的结论支持有必要调整组合预防方法，以解决人们认为的脆弱性。这些观点为植根于疾病视角的文化建构的研究增添了宝贵的见解。
{"title":"Maasai Girls’ Experiences of Ukimwi ni Homa (AIDS Is a Fever): Idioms of Vulnerability and HIV Risk in East Africa","authors":"Kristin Hedges","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.332","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.332","url":null,"abstract":"There have been enormous strides in response to the AIDS epidemic in the past decades; however, adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) remain at high risk for new HIV infection throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Recognizing this continued discrepancy, I call for more attention to girls’ perceptions of vulnerabilities by revisiting an ethnographic study of HIV risk carried out in 2004 in a rural community in Kenya. My analysis situates Maasai AGYW perceptions and understandings of HIV risk as a culturally constructed idiom of distress: “Ukimwi ni Homa” (AIDS is a fever). I examine the emic perspectives of HIV vulnerability and the association of sexual relationships within the context of economic precarity. Findings demonstrate how references to fevers expressed feelings of helplessness, which increased indifference to HIV risk. This indifference led AGYW to prioritize imminent economic needs over long-term effects of a viral infection that they perceived as inevitable. Critically reflecting on AGYW understandings of their own risk perceptions can influence effective HIV intervention design. My conclusions support the need for tailoring combination prevention approaches to address perceived vulnerabilities within populations. Such perspectives add valuable insights to studies rooted in cultural constructions of illness perspective.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42078264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.322
A. Cantor
Despite Costa Rica’s efforts to promote international tourism, the economy continues to struggle with unprecedented unemployment rates due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is especially concerning for tourism-dependent regions, such as the Monteverde Zone, where most residents have abandoned land-based livelihoods in favor of tourism. This study uses photovoice to illustrate the ways that small-scale food producers have adapted to the unique challenges of the COVID-19 global pandemic in a region that was already experiencing a loss of agrarian identity. Overall, local food producers have been affected by the diminished tourism economy through the closing of restaurants and the decrease in tourists, causing them to experience crop loss. Food producers have adapted to the economic impacts of the pandemic by re-investing their efforts into a local economy. As part of this shifting strategy, some food producers have begun to expand, diversify, and embrace an approach to growing food that is in line with building more resilient models of food production and engaging with their clients in different ways. Using community-based participatory methods, this study illustrates how food producers have adapted to changes brought on by the pandemic, re-positioning some of these rural agrarian actors as prominent figures in the local food movement.
{"title":"Through the Eyes on the Ground: Re-positioning Rural Agrarian Actors as Leaders in the Local Food Movement during the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"A. Cantor","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.322","url":null,"abstract":"Despite Costa Rica’s efforts to promote international tourism, the economy continues to struggle with unprecedented unemployment rates due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is especially concerning for tourism-dependent regions, such as the Monteverde Zone, where most residents have abandoned land-based livelihoods in favor of tourism. This study uses photovoice to illustrate the ways that small-scale food producers have adapted to the unique challenges of the COVID-19 global pandemic in a region that was already experiencing a loss of agrarian identity. Overall, local food producers have been affected by the diminished tourism economy through the closing of restaurants and the decrease in tourists, causing them to experience crop loss. Food producers have adapted to the economic impacts of the pandemic by re-investing their efforts into a local economy. As part of this shifting strategy, some food producers have begun to expand, diversify, and embrace an approach to growing food that is in line with building more resilient models of food production and engaging with their clients in different ways. Using community-based participatory methods, this study illustrates how food producers have adapted to changes brought on by the pandemic, re-positioning some of these rural agrarian actors as prominent figures in the local food movement.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47525641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.302
Chong Gao, Ho Hon Leung
In this paper, we examine the participation of commercial firms in the fight against COVID-19 through the lens of Corporate Community Involvement (CCI). To display CCI as part of ethical and responsible corporate behavior, CCI studies often use a business-centered approach while paying less attention to the role of the state. Based on the stories of some pharmaceutical companies in Guangdong province joining China’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, we argue that the state may play a crucial role in shaping CCI activities and in making companies partner with the government under a state of emergency. We also point out that it is likely for these companies to translate their involvement in solving public health problems into profit-seeking opportunities. As such, this paper contributes to CCI studies by introducing a state-led approach and suggesting a form of “state-led and market-driven” CCI. Moreover, this study provides fresh information about the effects of corporations on social life and the practice of socially responsible corporate behavior in a state of public health emergency to anthropologists in the new subfields of anthropology of corporate social responsibility and anthropology of business corporations.
{"title":"Re-imagining Corporate Community Involvement during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of Pharmaceutical Companies in Guangdong Province, China","authors":"Chong Gao, Ho Hon Leung","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.302","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we examine the participation of commercial firms in the fight against COVID-19 through the lens of Corporate Community Involvement (CCI). To display CCI as part of ethical and responsible corporate behavior, CCI studies often use a business-centered approach while paying less attention to the role of the state. Based on the stories of some pharmaceutical companies in Guangdong province joining China’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, we argue that the state may play a crucial role in shaping CCI activities and in making companies partner with the government under a state of emergency. We also point out that it is likely for these companies to translate their involvement in solving public health problems into profit-seeking opportunities. As such, this paper contributes to CCI studies by introducing a state-led approach and suggesting a form of “state-led and market-driven” CCI. Moreover, this study provides fresh information about the effects of corporations on social life and the practice of socially responsible corporate behavior in a state of public health emergency to anthropologists in the new subfields of anthropology of corporate social responsibility and anthropology of business corporations.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48282069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.311
Elise Berman, V. Collet
COVID-19 closed school buildings across the United States, forcing a shift to remote education. How families navigated remote schooling likely varied across class, racial, and ethnic differences, raising questions about how the pandemic might deepen educational inequities. We talked to Marshallese migrant families in a town in the South Central United States about their experiences with remote schooling in Spring 2020. Findings suggest families engaged in school activities at home and were invested in their children’s schooling. They reported numerous inequities tied to technology access and “time-collisions” between familial and educational schedules. They also reveal culturally specific patterns of home-school interactions we call “distributed involvement.” These issues are relevant during in-person as well as remote schooling. Families’ reports suggest problems with normative models of “parental involvement,” revealing ways to make home-school connections more culturally sustaining. A better understanding of reported COVID-19 experiences can inform educational policies and practices in post-pandemic futures.
{"title":"Marshallese Families’ Reported Experiences of Home-school Connections: An Asset-based Model for Critiquing “Parental Involvement” Frameworks and Understanding Remote Schooling during COVID-19","authors":"Elise Berman, V. Collet","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.311","url":null,"abstract":"COVID-19 closed school buildings across the United States, forcing a shift to remote education. How families navigated remote schooling likely varied across class, racial, and ethnic differences, raising questions about how the pandemic might deepen educational inequities. We talked to Marshallese migrant families in a town in the South Central United States about their experiences with remote schooling in Spring 2020. Findings suggest families engaged in school activities at home and were invested in their children’s schooling. They reported numerous inequities tied to technology access and “time-collisions” between familial and educational schedules. They also reveal culturally specific patterns of home-school interactions we call “distributed involvement.” These issues are relevant during in-person as well as remote schooling. Families’ reports suggest problems with normative models of “parental involvement,” revealing ways to make home-school connections more culturally sustaining. A better understanding of reported COVID-19 experiences can inform educational policies and practices in post-pandemic futures.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44491777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.263
Heather Henderson, Jason Wilson, Bernice McCoy
This article describes the integration of medical anthropologists as direct members of health care teams within a large, urban teaching hospital as a means to address the role of structural inequality in unequal health care delivery within the context of COVID-19. The pandemic starkly underlined the role structural forces such as food insecurity, housing instability, and unequal access to health insurance play among vulnerable populations that seek health care, particularly within the emergency department (ED). There is a critical need to recognize the reality that disease acquisition is a cultural process. This is a significant limitation of the biomedical model, which often considers disease as a separate entity from the social contexts in which disease is found. Further, a focus on patient-centered care can open the door for critical, clinically applied, medical anthropologists to team with physicians, merging ethnographic methods with health data and the socially constructed realities of patients’ lived experience to build new pathways of care. These pathways may better prepare physicians and health care systems to respond to novel threats like COVID-19, which are rooted in pathophysiological origins but have outcome distributions driven by cultural and structural determinants. To this end, we propose a reconfiguration of dominant biomedical ideologies around disease acquisition and spread by examining our work since 2018, which sees anthropologists embedded both locally and systematically in the creation of anthropologically informed treatment pathways for socially complex disease states like HIV, Hepatitis C, and Opioid Use Disorder (Henderson 2018). Understanding how these socially complex diseases concentrate and interact in populations is a potential opportunity to model solutions for other widespread and complex health care crises, including COVID-19.
{"title":"Applied Medical Anthropology and Structurally Informed Emergency Care in the Evolving Context of COVID-19","authors":"Heather Henderson, Jason Wilson, Bernice McCoy","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.263","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-80.4.263","url":null,"abstract":"This article describes the integration of medical anthropologists as direct members of health care teams within a large, urban teaching hospital as a means to address the role of structural inequality in unequal health care delivery within the context of COVID-19. The pandemic starkly underlined the role structural forces such as food insecurity, housing instability, and unequal access to health insurance play among vulnerable populations that seek health care, particularly within the emergency department (ED). There is a critical need to recognize the reality that disease acquisition is a cultural process. This is a significant limitation of the biomedical model, which often considers disease as a separate entity from the social contexts in which disease is found. Further, a focus on patient-centered care can open the door for critical, clinically applied, medical anthropologists to team with physicians, merging ethnographic methods with health data and the socially constructed realities of patients’ lived experience to build new pathways of care. These pathways may better prepare physicians and health care systems to respond to novel threats like COVID-19, which are rooted in pathophysiological origins but have outcome distributions driven by cultural and structural determinants. To this end, we propose a reconfiguration of dominant biomedical ideologies around disease acquisition and spread by examining our work since 2018, which sees anthropologists embedded both locally and systematically in the creation of anthropologically informed treatment pathways for socially complex disease states like HIV, Hepatitis C, and Opioid Use Disorder (Henderson 2018). Understanding how these socially complex diseases concentrate and interact in populations is a potential opportunity to model solutions for other widespread and complex health care crises, including COVID-19.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42687897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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