MHS-2410 Lecture Notes - Lecture 32: Medical Anthropology, Participant Observation, Ritonavir

• School: Vanderbilt University
• Department: Medicine, Health, and Society
• Course: MHS-2410
• Professor: Petty Juleigh

Document Summary

Manderson: applying medical anthropology in the control of infectious disease. While medical anthropology as a discrete discipline has a briefer history, its genesis is tied to anthropology"s most fundamental questions of social and cultural life. The failure to contain infectious diseases and the lack of comprehensive technical programs, health education and related behavioral interventions become the primary means to limit disease and reduce mortality. Public health programs aim to replace false beliefs with accurate knowledge, assuming that changing community knowledge will cause behavior to change. Considerable unease in documenting behavior and beliefs assumed to contribute to disease and ill health, in isolation from the social, economic and political contexts. Anthropologists conduct extensive field research to contextualize human behavior and specific values and beliefs. The loss of contextual information, and the oversimplification of behavior due to brevity of fieldwork and the lack of participant observation. For many infectious diseases, early diagnosis and treatment are crucial for reducing mortality.