Anthropology and Public Health: Bridging Differences in Culture and Society / Edition 2

by Robert A. Hahn, Marcia C. Inhorn

Overview

Many serious public health problems confront the world in the new millennium. Anthropology and Public Health examines the critical role of anthropology in four crucial public health domains: (1) anthropological understandings of public health problems such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, and diabetes; (2) anthropological design of public health interventions in areas such as tobacco control and elder care; (3) anthropological evaluations of public health initiatives such as Safe Motherhood and polio eradication; and (4) anthropological critiques of public health policies, including neoliberal health care reforms. As the volume demonstrates, anthropologists provide crucial understandings of public health problems from the perspectives of the populations in which the problems occur. On the basis of such understandings, anthropologists may develop and implement interventions to address particular public health problems, often working in collaboration with local participants. Anthropologists also work as evaluators, examining the activities of public health institutions and the successes and failures of public health programs. Anthropological critiques may focus on major international public health agencies and their workings, as well as public health responses to the threats of infectious disease and other disasters. Through twenty-four compelling case studies from around the world, the volume provides a powerful argument for the imperative of anthropological perspectives, methods, information, and collaboration in the understanding and practice of public health. Written in plain English, with significant attention to anthropological methodology, the book should be required reading for public health practitioners, medical anthropologists, and health policy makers. It should also be of interest to those in the behavioral and allied health sciences, as well as programs of public health administration, planning, and management. As the single most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of anthropology's role in public health, this volume will inform debates about how to solve the world's most pressing public health problems at a critical moment in human history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195374643
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/17/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	752
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Robert A. Hahn, PhD, MPH is a Senior Scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control in Atlanta, Georgia.

Marcia C. Inhorn, PhD, MPH, is William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at Yale University.

Table of Contents

bPart I: Anthropological Understanding of Public Health Problems/b1. The Anthropology of Childhood Malaria in Tanzania, Vinay Kamat2. Diagnosis and Management of Asthma in the Medical Marketplace of India: Implications for Effort to Improve Global Respiratory Health, David Van Sickle3. Situating Stress: Lessons from Lay Discourses on Diabetes, Nancy E. Schoenberg, Elaine M. Drew, and Eleanor Palo Stoller4. Undersatnding Prgnancy in a Population of Inner-City Women in New Orleans— Results of Qualitative Research, Carl Kendall, Aimee Afable-Munsuz, Ilene Speizer, Alexis Avery, Norine Schmidt, and John Santelli5. The Limits of "Heterosexual AIDS:" Ethnographic Research on Tourism and Male Sexual Labor in the Dominican Republic, Mark B. Padilla6. Male Infertility and Consanguinity in Lebanon: the Power of Ethnogrpahic Epidemiology, Marcia C. Inhorn, Loulou Kobeissi, Antoine A. Abu-Musa, Johnny Awward, Michael H. Fakih, Najwa Hammoud, Antoine B. Hannoun, Da'ad Lakkis, and Zaher Nassar7. Structural Violence, Political Violence, and the Health Costs of Civil Conflict: A Case Study from Peru, Tom Leatherman and R. Brooke ThomasbPart II: Anthropological Design of Public Health Interventions/b8. Bridges between Mental Health Care and Religious Healing in Puerto Rico: The Outcome of an Early Experiment, Joan D. Koss-Chioino9. Indigenization of Illness Support Groups for Lymphatic Filariasis in Haiti, Jeannine Coreil and Gladys Mayard10. Using Formative Research to Explore and Address Elder Health and Care in Chiapas, Mexico, Namino Glantz11. Anthropological Contributions to the Development of Culturally Appropriate Tobacco Cessation Programs: A Global Health Priority, Mark Nichter, Mimi Nichter, Siwi Padmawti, C.U. Thresia, and Project Quit Tobacco International Group12. From Street Research to Public Health Intervetnion: The Hartford Drug Monitoring Project, Merrill Singer, Greg Mirhej, Claudia Santelices, and Hassan Saleheen13. Sexual Risk Reduction Among Married Men and Women in Urban India: An Anthropological Intervention, Stephen L. Schensul, Ravi K. Verma, Bonnie K. Nastasi, Niranjan Saggurti, and Abdelwahed Mekki-BerradabPart III: Anthropological Evaluations of Public Health Initiatives/b14. Honorable Mutilation? Changing Responses to Female Genital Cutting in Sudan, Ellen Gruenbaum15. Making Pregnancy Safer for Women around the World: The Example of Safe Motherhood and Maternal Death in Guatemala, Nicole S. Berry16. Counting on Mother's Love, Karen Marie Moland and Astrid Blystad17. The Brazilian Response to AIDS and the Pharmaceuticalization of Global Health, Joao Biehl18. Anthropological and Public Health Perspectives on the Polio Eradication Initiative in Northern Nigeria, Elisha P. RennebPart IV: Anthropological Critiques of Public Health Policy/b19. "Sanitary Makeshifts" and the Perpetuation of Health Stratification in Indonesia, Eric A. Stein20. Global Panic, Local Repercussions: The Economic and Nutritional Effects of Bird Flu in Vietnam, Stacy Lockerbie and D. Ann Herring21. Neoliberal Infections and the Politics of Health: Resurgent Tuberculosis Epidemics in New York City and Lima, Peru, Sandy Smith-Nonini22. Biological Citizenship After Chernobyl, Adriana Petryna23. An Ethnographic Evaluation of Post-Alma Ata Health System Reforms in Mongolia: Lessons for Addressing Health Inequities in Poor Communities, Craig R. Janes24. Bureaucratic Aspects of International Health Programs, George M. Foster

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Paul Brodwin, Ph D(University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
Description: This rich collection of case studies shows how the perspectives and methods of medical anthropology can strengthen public health interventions, in both developing societies and resource-poor populations in the United States. The 24 chapters are primarily on-the-ground accounts of research-driven and community-based programs addressing a host of major public health problems, including infectious disease, addiction, and reproductive health. This is the second edition of a book published in 1999.
Purpose: The editors argue that when public health interventions fail, the culprit is often inadequate attention to (1) the cultural assumptions inherent in both Western medicine and local community responses to illness and (2) the historical and political forces that shape epidemics. To remedy this problem, individual chapters demonstrate how cultural knowledge aids in planning successful programs of health education, immunization, and behavioral change. Mastering this toolkit of conceptual approaches and research methods is crucial to contemporary global public health initiatives.
Audience: The book is intended for students and professionals in a wide range of public health disciplines (epidemiology, evaluation, health policy and planning, and other social-behavioral sciences). It is not a methods cookbook, however, and it does not replace mainstream texts of research design. It instead demonstrates how skilled practitioners have applied fundamental qualitative research tools of anthropology (interviews, participant observation, and focus groups) to complex, multilevel interventions. The book is excellent for teaching, since the authors of the chapters are transparent about their methods and rationales for using them. The editors and chapter authors are all experienced with long-term, in-depth research.
Features: The introduction provides a helpful review of the fundamental orientation of cultural anthropology, intended chiefly for public health professionals without background in the area. The rest of the book is composed of standalone case studies that use anthropological approaches in various ways to elucidate local-level and indigenous responses to illness, to design and evaluate interventions that are tailored to local cultural frameworks, and to criticize public health policy that merely reproduces the inequalities and structural problems that generate ill health. The case study approach is fundamental to this book. Individual programs and communities are examined in great detail. Moreover, the authors explain in detail their methodological choices: an approach that will benefit future planners and evaluators. The book does not, however, feature much critical self-examination of the role of anthropology in public health, despite the mention of this perspective in the editors' introduction.
Assessment: This is the second edition of one of the major books on the interface of medical anthropology and public health. Since the major problems in global health — and the political and bureaucratic responses to them — transform so rapidly, a new and revised edition is warranted. This book is oriented towards public health practitioners, and, as befits the supremely pragmatic orientation of that field, it is a very helpful compendium of the applications of medical anthropology to solve specific problems. As a collection of case studies, it is probably without peer. It is broader in orientation than either Trostle's Epidemiology and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1995) or Nichter's Global Health: Why Cultural Perceptions, Social Representations, and Biopolitics Matter (University of Arizona Press, 2008).

Doody's Review Service

"This book is oriented towards public health practitioners, and, as befits the supremely pragmatic orientation of that field, it is a very helpful compendium of the applications of medical anthropology to solve specific problems. As a collection of case studies, it is probably without peer. It is broader in orientation than either Trostle's Epidemiology and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1995) or Nichter's Global Health: Why Cultural Perceptions, Social Representations, and Biopolitics Matter (University of Arizona Press, 2008)."—Doody's

From the Publisher