Anthropology and Public Health: Bridging Differences in Culture and Society
- ISBN-10
- 0199705542
- ISBN-13
- 9780199705542
- Category
- Medical
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2008-10-17
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Authors
- Marcia C. Inhorn, Robert A. Hahn
Description
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.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2009
- 730 pages
- Paperback
- Oxford University Press, USA
Similar books
-
Anthropology in Public Health: Bridging Differences in Culture and Society
By Robert A. Hahn, Kate W. HarrisThis book provides an overview of anthropology and shows in 15 wide-ranging case studies how anthropological concepts and methods can be applied to public health problems.
-
The Anthropology of Health and Healing
By Mari WomackIn this book, Mari Womack champions a practice of medicine that includes the maintenance of health as well as treatment of illness, emphasizing the importance of lifestyle and the life cycle.
-
Making and Unmaking Public Health in Africa: Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives
By Ruth J. Prince, Rebecca MarslandThese are framed increasingly in terms of international concerns about security, human rights, and humanitarian crisis.
-
Global Mental Health: Anthropological Perspectives
By Emily Mendenhall, Brandon A KohrtThe book -includes discussion of traditional versus biomedical beliefs about mental illness, the role of culture in mental illness, intersections between religion and mental health, intersections of mind and body, and access to health care; ...
-
Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health
By Eugene T RichardsonIn Epidemic Illusions, Eugene Richardson, a physician and an anthropologist, contends that public health practices--from epidemiological modeling and outbreak containment to Big Data and causal inference--play an essential role in ...
-
Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction
By Paul Farmer, Arthur Kleinman, Matthew BasilicoUntil now, this nascent field did not have a unifying conceptual approach, let alone a text. This book, based on decades of practice and years of successfully teaching global health at Harvard, masterfully fills this gap.
-
A Companion to Medical Anthropology
By Merrill Singer, Pamela I. EricksonThis is critical social research at its very best.” Richard G. Parker, Columbia University “With its broad scope and accomplished contributors, this volume will be a primary reference for all medical anthropologists and students of the ...
-
A Companion to the Anthropology of Environmental Health
By Merrill SingerFeaturing contributions from noted scholars in medical anthropology, environmental and public health studies, and related fields in the social sciences, this timely volume gets to the root of such broad concerns as to the reasons why humans ...
-
Medical Anthropology and African American Health
By Eric J. BaileyIn a related study , Thomas and Quinn ( 1993 ) examined the attitudes and beliefs about HIV / AIDS among African Americans as it relates to needle exchange programs . A needs assessment of attitudes and beliefs before the implementation ...
-
Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor
By Paul FarmerKoss, Koss, and Woodruff 1991, p. 342. From November 1995 to May 1996, the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control jointly conducted a national telephone survey that confirmed the high rates of assault against ...