Anthropology And Epidemiology

Over the past two decades increasing interest has emerged in the contribu tions that the social sciences might make to the epidemiological study of patterns of health and disease. Several reasons can be cited for this increasing interest. Primary among these has been the rise of the chronic, non-infectious diseases as important causes of morbidity and mortality within Western populations during the 20th century. Generally speaking, the chronic, non infectious diseases are strongly influenced by lifestyle variables, which are themselves strongly influenced by social and cultural forces. The under standing of the effects of the behavioral factors in, say, hypertension, thus requires an understanding of the social and cultural factors which encourage obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, non-compliance with anti-hypertensive medica tions (or other prescribed regimens), and stress. Equally, there is a growing awareness that considerations of human behavior and its social and cultural determinants are important for understanding the distribution and control of infectious diseases. Related to this expansion of epidemiologic interest into the behavioral realm 'has been the development of etiological models which focus on the psychological, biological and socio-cultural characteristics of hosts, rather than exclusive concern with exposure to a particular agent or even behavioral risk. Also during this period advances in statistical and computing techniques have made accessible the ready testing of multivariate causal models, and so have encouraged the measurement of the effects of social and cultural factors on disease occurrence.

This book reveals unexamined assumptions and shows how sociocultural context influences measurement of disease.

Over the past decades, infectious disease epidemics have come to increasingly pose major global health challenges to humanity. The Anthropology of Epidemics approaches epidemics as total social phenomena: processes and events which encompass and exercise a transformational impact on social life whilst at the same time functioning as catalysts of shifts and ruptures as regards human/non-human relations. Bearing a particular mark on subject areas and questions which have recently come to shape developments in anthropological thinking, the volume brings epidemics to the forefront of anthropological debate, as an exemplary arena for social scientific study and analysis.

Ranging in time and locale, these essays, which combine theoretical argument with empirical observation, are based on research in historical and cultural settings. The contributors accept the notion that all knowledge is socially and culturally constructed and examine the contexts in which that knowledge is produced and practiced in medicine, psychiatry, epidemiology, and anthropology. -- from publisher 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.

Anthropologists also work as evaluators, examining the activities of public health institutions and the successes and failures of public health programs.

Societies in transition are often faced with new settings and/or new diseases that require a response in order for the affected group to thrive or survive. A lack of effective response by a transitional population to a new pathogen can lead to the group's disintegration. A stark example of this, historically, is the decline of Native American civilizations with the arrival of European colonists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The transitional response mechanism has been a neglected topic in anthropology until the publication of this book. In a broad selection of nineteen essays by distinguished researchers, the epidemiology and health status of prehistoric, historical, and present day populations in transition are thoroughly explored. Different models--biomedical, ethnomedical, ecological, and politicoeconomic--are used to illustrate the effects of transition on the health of human populations throughout the world. Swedlund and Armelagos have compiled and arranged these essays into three parts: genetic and evolutionary perspectives; infectious disease and nutrition in temporal perspective; and social epidemiology. Some of the topics studied in the essays include: disease and evolution in Amerindian populations; health and disease in prehistoric transitional peoples; mortality and morbidity consequences of nutritional variation in early child growth; and social support and mortality in post-transition populations. This insightful book will provide a vital perspective for medical anthropologists, development specialists, epidemiologists, and health professionals, as well as for graduate students in related course areas.

In the past ten years, medical anthropology has come into its own as a flourishing sub-discipline within anthropology, with an expanded research agenda and sophisticated methodology. This handbook offers both an introduction for those not trained in the field and a state-of-the-art survey encompassing the range of theoretical orientations, research findings, and methods that characterize the discipline as it moves into the 1990s. Each of the nineteen chapters explores recent developments in a major subarea of medical anthropology and speculates about directions for future research and theoretical exploration. The chapters are arranged in five sections, the first of which addresses core issues covering the breadth of current theoretical concerns. The sections that follow treat other aspects of medical anthropology, including a range of medical systems and approaches; the most recent trends in the crosscultural study of health and healing; medical dimensions of the interaction of populations with the natural and cultural environment; research methods; and some of the most pressing policy and advocacy issues confronting medicine today.