Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xxiv, 271 p.; also includes graphics (some col.). Includes abstract and vita. Advisor: Ivy L. Pike, Dept. of Anthropology. Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-231).

<p> The war on obesity is a compelling topic in the United States&mdash;especially when as of 2012 17 percent, approximately 12.7 million, of children between the ages of 2-19 years are obese. This topic matters to anthropologists for two reasons&mdash;first, childhood socialization has been a focal point in the study of anthropology, and secondly, food is culture. This project report reflects my collaboration with a school in Southern California to implement a different approach to teaching children healthy eating habits. It focuses on ways that introducing new foods in a positive and fun environment will create a better relationship with food while increasing the students&rsquo; cultural awareness. This approach combined the fields of geography, history, culture, and cuisine to teach students how each field influences one another and affects the nutrition of the people and in turn ourselves. Using standard ethnographic techniques of participant observation this research reports on the reaction the students have to learning about food in a cultural context. </p>

Thesis (doctoral)--Institute for Tropical Hygiene and Geographical Medicine, Dept. of the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam. / Summary in English, Dutch and Spanish. Includes bibliographical references (p. [225]-245) and index.

When a biomedical curriculum is exported from the First World to the Third, what embedded cultural values come along? Do locally specific historical, political, religious, or socioeconomic associations of the “physician” as signifier shape the professional values students take on? Or is professional identity, like most of the rest of the curricular content, imported from the North? To date, empirical research on professional socialization has been restricted almost completely to North America. In the twenty-first century, when biomedicine is learned and practiced worldwide, the universality of socializing processes cannot be assumed. The project described here was collaboratively designed to assess the socializing function of medical education in Malawi. This cross-sectional qualitative research explores the acquisition of professional identity in students at a new medical school in Malawi, documenting changes during medical training in the values and norms that make up professional identity. I used a sequential research method involving focus group discussions, interviews and a questionnaire, moving from open-ended and general to more specific questions. This method was supplemented by archival research and “observant participation” at the university's teaching hospital. The homogenizing process of basic science education during the first two years of medical school in Malawi appears similar to that found by researchers in North America. When students reach their hospital training, however, their nascent scientist doctor identities crash into a clinical reality in which the tools of science are largely unavailable. Responding to the resulting crisis, they may preserve the Northern doctor-scientist identity by seeking a geographic or occupational location in which its execution is possible. They may also reject the identity of detached technocrat to claim instead the dual roles of political activist and loving witness to suffering. I address historical and economic conditions that shape these responses, and discuss their implications for health in Malawi, for medical pedagogy, and for anthropological research on identity in an era of globalization. I use Gramsci's notion of contradictory consciousness to show how discrepancies between hegemonic cognitive frameworks of identity and real conditions of work have the potential to create a revolutionary new consciousness among doctors working in poverty.

"Planting Wholesome Seeds"| Organic Farming and Community Supported Agriculture at Sweetwater Organic Community Farm

<p> Medical experts claim that Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among United States military service personnel, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan has contributed to an &ldquo;epidemic of suicide&rdquo; in the U.S. However, veterans, military commanders, and mental health providers argue that feelings of grief, guilt, mistrust, rage, and alienation are actually normal moral reactions to the abnormal situations that war creates. Furthermore, they argue that these normal reactions are currently transformed into a psychiatric diagnosis that promises clinical solution &ndash; a cure. Recent epidemiologic studies suggest that evidence-based clinical treatments are ineffective for a majority of veterans with PTSD and that the main barrier to seeking treatment is self-stigma by veterans. This ethnography interrogates the failure in care and vectors of blame that surround it by documenting veterans&rsquo; own critical reactions to being diagnosed and/or labeled with PTSD. These narratives provide a moment to critically examine the medicalization and commodification of trauma, as well as the bureaucratization of care, that continue to negatively impact what I describe as veteranhood &ndash; a deep constellation of personal and military values. Everyday life for veterans becomes a clash of cultural models, worldviews and various stakeholders of their care. The lack of common ground or &ldquo;cultural consonance&rdquo; (versus PTSD/stigma) lies behind the social processes that contribute to veterans&rsquo; uneven reintegration into civilian life. This ethnography provides counter-narratives of emergent veteranhood that challenge the dominant cultural script of &ldquo;stigma as the main barrier to care.&rdquo; These narratives dismantle concepts of self-stigma by shifting the focus from the standard trauma model of victimization towards a productive veteranhood, where agency remains essential to identity and everyday life. Veterans that reframe the post-effects of war as an issue of <i>cultural dissonance,</i> as opposed to a mental disorder, are creating new personal scripts for healing that a medical anthropology and caregivers must account for. Veterans desire solutions for their distress within their communities, their culture(s), not within the confines of a medical clinic or within the categorical parameters of PTSD.</p>

<p> This dissertation examines the processes of healing and transformation experienced by persons in the Cuban American, white, middle class Orisha worship community in Miami, FL, focusing on all the areas in which healing can take place. Orisha worship uses a holistic approach to health, in which physical, mental and spiritual illnesses may be healed. In the process of healing, persons embody the discourse of mastery and enslavement and the social processes of this Orisha worship community, via religious rituals, and exist in relation to Orishas. My research question focuses on how people in the Orisha worship community of Miami who are ill seek embodied healing and advice from orishas who are not ill and have the power to heal them. My data was gathered using questionnaires for direct interviews, and observations during religious rituals including ceremonies (both public and private), drummings and <i>Ocha </i> birthday parties. I also draw on my personal experiences and initiation onto the Orisha worship community. My overall findings indicate that there are a variety of modalities of healing in Orisha worship, each with the aim of manipulating <i>ashe,</i> the divine force in Orisha worship. People take an active role in changing their illnesses by performing <i> ebos;</i> or by becoming initiated in Orisha worship through receiving <i> collares, guerreros</i> or making <i>Ocha;</i> or via the healing and transformative effects of spirit possession. People are agents of change that seek to ameliorate their symptomology by invoking and employing the spiritual world. My research contributes to the Anthropological literature on embodiment, personhood and healing.</p>

<p> It has been shown on both local and national scales in the US that there is a small number of people whose healthcare costs make up a significantly disproportionate amount of total healthcare costs. Much of the costs that these "high-utilizers of care" incur come from emergency department visits and inpatient hospital admissions for health problems that would be treated more economically by primary and specialist care. Numerous "hot-spotting" intervention programs have been created over the last decade in attempts to both lower costs and improve the quality of care and health outcomes of "high-utilizers" by actively connecting patients with the existing primary and specialist care system and the social services system. Initial quantitative analyses have shown that this approach appears to largely accomplish these aims. However, there is a need for complementary research that seeks to understand the processes behind such important outcomes. </p><p> This study takes a closer look at one program's process of connecting patients to services, using "structural vulnerability" theory to frame its findings. Qualitative data from open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 17 participants (including patients, patient family members, program staff, and healthcare providers) were coded using qualitative analysis software. Resulting themes are used to first describe the problems faced by both patients and providers, emphasizing how these problems are exacerbated or caused by structural factors. Second, the program's process of connecting patients and providers is illustrated, paying particular attention to themes that showed discrepancies in participant responses and that point to the existence of incidental services provided by outreach workers. Ultimately, results show how the connection process is more than simply training patients and providers to work together, but in fact requires bandaging and sometimes healing "structural wounds" and other systemic problems before productive connections can be made and sustained.</p>

<p> Children are increasingly designated &ldquo;at risk&rdquo; for various diseases, which have&mdash;until recently&mdash;been considered predominately adult-onset diseases. Young children are now acquiring type 2 diabetes, which medical professionals have nicknamed one of &ldquo;the slow and silent killers.&rdquo; Many disadvantaged communities are disproportionately afflicted with these illnesses. Entire groups are labeled &ldquo;at risk&rdquo; by governmental agencies, which is a problematic construct since it marks people in certain communities as more likely to get sick because of inherent weakness. Historically, the discursive relationship between Latinos and diabetes has played out with a common biomedical narrative that stages this population as prone to illness. </p><p> The accounts of type 2 diabetes found in science, academia, and the mainstream media tend to tell the stories of adult patients and how their health is compromised by illness. Absent are youths&rsquo; voices, their experiences, and their beliefs about a disease that they learn through family, intervention policies, and media discourse. Current and past intervention campaigns call for changes to diet and physical activity. These types of interventions have criticized the menus of school lunches and have promoted increased activity, one widely publicized national example was the Let&rsquo;s Move campaign. </p><p> Calling for a reevaluation of traditional diabetes prevention strategies, which are usually focused on adults, this study will seek to provide a chance for children to add their voices to the conversation. The absence of their voices is profound and could perpetuate stereotypes about illness and risk. Through their narratives and short films the participants in the study will express their understanding, knowledge, and beliefs about type 2 diabetes. This study explores how children decide what their own type 2 diabetes intervention strategies look like. The participants will have the opportunity to take control of their own discourse by defining what being &ldquo;at risk&rdquo; for type 2 diabetes means to them and whether they think being &ldquo;at risk&rdquo; is a real concern. By putting cameras in the children&rsquo;s hands, we can see what stories matter to them and how they conceptualize ideas about health and wellness. Through this project, the children have a chance to take part in activities that shift the paradigm from &ldquo;at risk&rdquo; to becoming &ldquo;at promise.&rdquo; As the lead researcher, I will revisit a space, which was once my own school, and with a new double role, as parent volunteer and researcher, the focus of my return is to elicit and facilitate students&rsquo; communication about their perceptions, ideas and reactions related to type 2 diabetes.</p><p>

Since 1984, injecting drug users have been a subculture at high risk for infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). They become infected with HIV through the sharing of infected needles and other drug equipment, and through unprotected sex. These practices are embedded in the normative behaviors of the subculture; behaviors which addicts have difficulty changing. Persons who fall victim to drug abuse share a common career that begins with the reasons they began to inject drugs and coalesces in the processes by which they maintain their addiction. The most significant aspects of this career are those that put an injection drug user in life or death situations. Their perception of risk, their risk taking, and the forces of withdrawal that lead to the taking of risk all play an important role in the transmission of HIV. Central to the career of the addict are the social agencies with which s/he may come in contact. Whether geared to rehabilitation, incarceration, or AIDS prevention, social agencies are often the only institutions to interpret, intervene, and offer assistance on behalf of the drug user's current situation. Yet, these social agencies have been unsuccessful at curtailing the rate of infection among drug addicted persons. An innovative approach that addresses the complex problem of drug addiction and AIDS is proposed and demonstrated. This approach encourages the development of a user-driven model of drug recovery. A comprehensive approach to the dual epidemic of AIDS and drug abuse is needed to arrest control of the forces that threatens the life of a growing number of young adults nationwide.