Anthropology and Public Health

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.

• PART I: ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEMS ; 1. The Anthropology of Childhood Malaria in Tanzania ; 2. Diagnosis and Management of Asthma in the Medical Marketplace of India: Implications for Effort to Improve Global Respiratory Health ; 3. Situating Stress: Lessons from Lay Discourses on Diabetes ; 4. Undersatnding Prgnancy in a Population of Inner-City Women in New Orleans- Results of Qualitative Research ; 5. The Limits of "Heterosexual AIDS:" Ethnographic Research on Tourism and Male Sexual Labor in the Dominican Republic ; 6. Male Infertility and Consanguinity in Lebanon: the Power of Ethnogrpahic Epidemiology ; 7. Structural Violence, Political Violence, and the Health Costs of Civil Conflict: A Case Study from Peru ; PART II: ANTHROPOLOGICAL DESIGN OF PUBLIC HEALTH INTERVENTIONS ; 8. Bridges between Mental Health Care and Religious Healing in Puerto Rico: The Outcome of an Early Experiment ; 9. Indigenization of Illness Support Groups for Lymphatic Filariasis in Haiti ; 10. Using Formative Research to Explore and Address Elder Health and Care in Chiapas, Mexico ; 11. Anthropological Contributions to the Development of Culturally Appropriate Tobacco Cessation Programs: A Global Health Priority ; 12. From Street Research to Public Health Intervetnion: The Hartford Drug Monitoring Project ; 13. Sexual Risk Reduction Among Married Men and Women in Urban India: An Anthropological Intervention ; PART III: ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVALUATIONS OF PUBLIC HEALTH INITIATIVES ; 14. Honorable Mutilation? Changing Responses to Female Genital Cutting in Sudan ; 15. Making Pregnancy Safer for Women around the World: The Example of Safe Motherhood and Maternal Death in Guatemala ; 16. Counting on Mother's Love ; 17. The Brazilian Response to AIDS and the Pharmaceuticalization of Global Health ; 18. Anthropological and Public Health Perspectives on the Polio Eradication Initiative in Northern Nigeria ; PART IV: ANTHROPOLOGICAL CRITIQUES OF PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY ; 19. "Sanitary Makeshifts" and the Perpetuation of Health Stratification in Indonesia ; 20. Global Panic, Local Repercussions: The Economic and Nutritional Effects of Bird Flu in Vietnam ; 21. Neoliberal Infections and the Politics of Health: Resurgent Tuberculosis Epidemics in New York City and Lima, Peru ; 22. Biological Citizenship After Chernobyl ; 23. An Ethnographic Evaluation of Post-Alma Ata Health System Reforms in Mongolia: Lessons for Addressing Health Inequities in Poor Communities ; 24. Bureaucratic Aspects of International Health Programs

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).